JPS 3527 
^.184 C5 






1913 



Copy 1 



CIVIC SONGS 



BY 

DAVID C. NIMMO 



CIVIC SONGS 



BY 



%W DAVID C.NIMMO 



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Copyright 1913, by 
David C. Nimmo 



TIMES PRINTING CO. DETROIT, MICH. 



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©CI,A330G96 



PREFACE 




A.RLY in 1908 I published a book of "Songs." 
It could not find a publisher and the only 
person I had evidence read the book could 
see little merit in it. In 1910 I published 
another book of "Songs and Tales" which 
was even farther from a publisher and reader. In 
fact some of the copies which were presented to uni- 
versity professors on condition that they should read 
a specimen or two of the work were returned. Per- 
haps I ought to accept this as final judgment, espe- 
cially as I can now see many reasons and am not sur- 
prised at their failures. The judgment of the hour is 
disputed. I have not lost faith in the three major songs 
of both the first and second book, though I should like 
to revise them all. cut half the introduction from the 
"Mother's Lamentation' and balance up and add con- 
siderable more matter to "The Debate." For this rea- 
son I feel justified in putting "Civic Songs" into print. 
If the work ever comes to public attention, - and if 
Time, the supremest, most impartial, truest and last of 
all critics, gives the universal judgment against it, 1 
will accept the deliverance and believe my faith has 
had its roots in the author's blindness. 

In putting this matter forth I regret it is not in a 
better form. A soul ought to have a corresponding 
body. As a machinist working ten hours a day at the 
trade I do not feel justified in throwing away any more 
money than necessary. This will preserve the songs 
till perhaps they find a publisher, which I haVe now 
ceased to look for, as sometimes a communication for 
the publishing of a book of verse is not even answered. 



I cannot say of this book as of the two former, that 
it is not worth a mouthful of bread. I sold the "Black- 
smith's Song" to the Trade Journal, and the "Elec- 
trician's Song" to the Edison Monthly, both of New 
York, Two editors whose chief business is the 
mechanics of life w^ere the first and only to write a 
few words of appreciation. They were a pleasure and 
against some of the most unkindest cuts of all helped 
to harden the spirit and stiffen the backbone to front 
the growing and grimer reality of life. 

Some of these songs can hardly be called "Civic," 
but if they ever find their way to the public they will 
easily find their proper classification. This is pre- 
sented to you with the hope that you will read, and as 
far as lies within you, give the judgment of the uni- 
versal spirit. D. C. N. 

Detroit, Sept. 1, 1912. 




CONTENTS 



Page 

The American Eagle 7 

To Uncle Sam ; 20 

A National Song — No. 1 21 

A National Song — No. 2 22 

A Fourth of July Song 2;{ 

The United States Forever 24 

A Michigan State Song 25 

An Arizona State Song 27 

A Missouri State Song 28 

A North Dakota State Song 29 

An Oregon State Song 30 

A Colorado State Song . . 31 

A Wyoming State Song 3 2 

A Texas State Song 33 

An Ohio State Song 34 

Lincoln 35 

The World's Desire 37 

A Detroit City Song 43 

A Pittsburgh City Song '. . . 4 4 

New York City Song 45 

5 



A WashingtOD City Song iQ 

A Cincinnati City Song 47 

A Chicago City Song 48 

The Blacksmith's Song 49 

The Electrician's Song 51 

The Laborer's Song 5 2 

The Aviator's Song 53 

Woman's Civic Song 55 

Vote and No-Vote 56 

The Song of the Socialist 59 

The Doctrine of Devils 76 

A Socialistic Need 7S 

The Platform 7 9 

The Singer and Dreamer 80 

"To Be or Not to Be" 81 

The Dream 85 

Down and Out 88 

The Interrogation Mark 91 

Magnanimity . 94. 

Loss and Gain 97 

The Sky and Sea Line 97 

The Candy Maker 98 

The Dreamed of 100 

The Echo 103 

Recreation 107 

The Song of Soul Against Sense 109 

Go, Go My Songs 127 

6 



THE AMERICAN EAGLE; 

Oh pinioned prince of heaven's wide expanse! 
Oh citizen of kingdoms in the sky! 
Oh dweller mid the solar lightning lance! 
Oh spirit winged to soar and never die! 
Oh mighty and symbolic soul! Oh high 
And emblematic nature! Oh type divine 
Of life's impassioned heart when it doth sigh 
For liberty! Oh prophetic sign 
Of those regenerated states that lie 
Within the future, and yet upon us shine 
The form and spirit life for which the nations pine! 

Out of all things in heaven and earth and sea 
That come to men appealing in their might, 
This Union when she rose among the free 
Enfranchised nations of the world, caught sight 
Of thy majestic power and chose thy bright 
Emancipation to image her desires. 
The promised hope of man's ancestral right. 
The strength and heat of Liberty's own fires, 
The generations rising for the fight 
And continents of freedom in the sires, 
All fixed themselves on thee to bear their high aspires. 

And thou hast borne the heart and hope and life; 
And more than these, the rich maternal dream 
That brings to birth and nourishes through strife 
With noblest works as patriot-prophets deem. 
And thou dost bear beyond what all may seem 
To the selfish, blind and staggering nations. 
Yea! virtues more within thy bosom teem 
To lift beyond time's proud imperial stations 
. Than most of thine own worshipers can theme. 
In thee is life and ideal state creations 
Whose scattered fragments lie mid time's mad desecrations. 

Who would not pause and feed his restless eye 
Upon thy form of majesty and power? 
Thou hast dominion o'er the azure sky 
And all beneath her rich concaving bower. 
Thou art exalted on the glorious hour 
Of noonday, and thy descending spiriis claim 
Ascensive souls. Not the sun upon his tower, 
Nor the interswinging worlds, nor any fame 
Of earthly seas or mountains can cast a lower 
On thee, for elemental passions flame 
Within thy mighty heart and overflow thy frame. 



Which frame is in the vast proportions 
Of those mighty things that base the universe: 
Thee and thy members seem distortions 
To puny man and all he doth disburse. 
Thou art like expansive clouds the mountains verse 
Upon their summits, or some exaltation 
From the deeps of plumbless ocean. The nurse 
That brought thee forth to v^ing the wide creation 
Spaces made thee a form in v^hich to purse 
The genius of a most resourceful nation, 
A most imperial form for most empyreal station. 

And beauty too as great things always are 
She cast within thy full and flowing heart. 
Which whence doth burst the dull material bar 
And splendors like the morning doth impart. 
Every line swings out to strength, and scorning art 
Doth rise into the solemn and sublime 
Of beauty. Though nature's sober colors dart 
From thee across these rainbow splendors, the prime 
Armorial robe thou never long canst bart 
Is the golden, golden radiance of thy clime 
Which robes thy matchless form as it doth the king of time. 

Thy head is like the summit of a tower; 
It rests upon thy cone-like neck as pride 
Doth poise herself in an immortal hour. 
Thy unconquerable beak doth deride 
The service of the shield and hast supplied 
The all protecting helmet. Thy tail 
So like a fan projecting roof doth guide 
Or aid thy course wherever thou doth sail. 
Just underneath thy mighty talons hide 
Their steel-like prongs which tyrants do bewail, 
But thou dost never use until thy patience fail. 

What lightning bolts are fixed within thy eyes 
And far behind an incandescent fire 
That all before that deep and distant lies 
Can see and search without the least desire? 
What voluminous electric coils doth wire 
Thy sinuous neck, and what potentials rest 
Within the batteries that never tire 
Projecting from thy broad and bulwarked breast? 
Thy massive and torpedic frame doth sire 
The flying dreams the aeronaut has blessed, 
And all around with more than iron-clad armor dressed. 

8 



But Oh thy wings, thy mighty matchless wings 
That with resistless power strike mortal sight! 
When they are folded down on thee each flings 
A sense of steel resistance and doth bedight 
Thy electric-muscled heart like two bright, 
Immense and most invulnerable shields. 
When extended to the width of their delight 
They seem two fans the morning spirit wields 
To chase afar the phantoms of the night; 
Two might}' wings across the azure fields 
To wake the purer wind to which the spirit yields. 

But Oh thy wings, thy mighty matchless wings! 
The wings like which imagination's hour 
Can give no image but the spirit things 
Enthroned upon the height of their immortal dower. 
The cloudy wings that doth bedight high heaven's bower 
And shade the sun upon his noonday throne. 
The massive planet wings on which our 
Own ecliptic souls have ever flown, 
The all triumphant wings that doth devour 
The passioned heart that for them ever moan. 
Are bound upon thy soul and bound on thee alone. 

But Oh thy wings; thy mighty matchless wings 
Of resistless, omnipotential might! 
On which Liberty with perpendicular springs 
Doth poise herself upon the heightless height. 
The wings of the world-soul that with delight 
Smite earth's atmospheres with such terrific strife 
That by the stroke the tyrants of the night 
Are stricken down as by a lightning knife! 
The wings on which the everlasting right 
With the passions that her fountain heart holds rife 
Ascends unto her throne to rule the spheres of life! 

But Oh thy wings, thy mighty matchless wings 
The wings which bear ten thousand burdened years, 
And all the host of men and travailing things 
Who groaned in heart and wept their crimson tears! 
The wings on which the patriot's visioned spheres 
Soar up the steep, resistless heights of heaven 
And find a course where never more he fears 
This selfishness and these dark storms or levin! 
The wings on which thy spirit when she hears 
The cry of new born souls on earth with seven- 
Fold speed descends to them with sure and swift replevin! 

9 



But Oh thy wings, thy mighty matchless wings, 
Of deep and inconceivable delight. 
On which the patriot lives, the poet sings 
And all Life's virtues ride upon the height! 
The wings that with an all sustaining right 
Doth bear aloft the state into the skies 
Intact fiom time's contagion, and with a flight 
That draweth forth the world's unfathomed cries! 
Oh everlasting wings that sail tbe bright 
Noontide dominions, and yet doth higher rise 
Into the altitudes that still more vitalize! 

What dominions of immeasurable space are thine! 
The celestial and untraveled wide expanse — 
The unobstructed openness and the divine 
Immortal reaches beyond all mortal glance — 
A boundless length and breadth that doth entrance 
The high desires that worship thee on earth — 
A heightless and unthinkable advance 
In the recess of heaven's solemn mirth — 
A dominion far above this daily dance 
Of mortal things and all we hold of worth, 
Infinite, eternal and thine unto its girth. 

An infinite, eternal, vast domain 
Which the golden sun with an effulgence bright 
Doth fill and flood and ever more sustain 
With transcendental energies of light. 
What blinding radiant streams pour from the height 
And steep with an immortal life each space 
And power of thy possession! Oh what a sight 
Of new and most majestic splendors grace 
The broad horizons of morning and of night! 
What rainbow dreams and golden hopes embrace 
Their spirits from the sun and through thy kingdoms race! 

What ethereal spirit atmospheres 
Of elemental essences must feed 
The youthful heart of thy victorious years! 
TTiy glorious all sustaining azures breed 
In thee and all that hold thy sacred creed 
The source and sense of immortality. 
The eternal powers and infinite that lead 
The earth upward, with lavish impartiality 
Have through thy kingdom's length and breadth been freed. 
All things that are in most intense reality? 
Thy kingdom feeds and thee near heaven's wide portality. 

10 



And from the earth hast thou not gathered strength? 
Though like the type of European power 
Thy birth and breed was in the breadth and length 
Of this new continent. Long before cur 
History, circling thy firmamental bower 
Thou didst drink the elemental energies' 
Of this new world. Thou didst feed thy immortal hour 
With forests, mountains, plains and all that is 
From sea to sea. The visions strong that tower 
Above the strife and death of time's abyss 
Fed thy impassioned heart with far prophetic bliss. 

In thy young days the world soul's mighty zest 
Passed into thee with those titanic powers 
That sweep the earth where nature has expressed 
Herself in vastest amplitudes . The towers 
Where thunder storms and lightning bolts fill the bowers 
Of trembling heaven were thy supreme delight, 
And thou didst breast the fierce tempestuous hours 
Till they retired disastered from the fight. 
The cyclones and the blizzard that devours 
With Arctic strength did congregate their might, 
Yet right into their teeth was thy unwearied flight. 

The rich potentialities of strength 
From these yet unconfederated states — 
This protectorate of ample breadth and length 
That then and now marches to what thy soul creates 
For it — how oft, how often it elates 
To passion's most immortal measure! 
Thou sawest it before its infant dates 
And sported with its elements at leisure. 
Thcu sawest growth and struggles with the weights 
Of tyranny; and Oh thy thrills of pleasure 
That this new promise held the earth's sublimest treasure! 

So on the nation's bright auspicious morn 
Thou wert in glorious emancipation; 
And in thy unadopted state liadst borne 
To earth the patriot's visions of the sun 
To front the far oppressors, and thus begun 
The endless strife for man's ancestral right. 
Thou didst guide the raw colonials the one 
Enfrancliised path the bravest must bedight 
With life and death. Their crimson blood did run. 
Into the earth before the noonday light 
But soul rose to the sky and was with thine unite. 

11 



Upon this young republic, as on a birth 
Divine and sheltered from aristocratic 
Pride, as on the one prophetic mirth 
Of the great earth mother, thy ecstatic 
Visions fed themselves even with the sabbatic 
And millennial dreams. As the years nursed 
The infant and the new world's emphatic 
Spirit grew up and self-consciousness burst 
Within them, thou didst scorn all ancient Attic 
Greatness; and hovering above, eyed and versed 
The democratic child and fed its spirit's thirst. 

The nation grew. The peaceful years of rest 
Filled up the land, and from it forth did spring 
A race of men new spirits high possessed, 
A commoner and yet far more a king. 
Great elem_ental natures have a swing 
Of majesty, and their presence doth create 
The glorious dreams of splendor that wing 
Upon the vision. Such inspirations great 
Our adolescent years on thee did fling. 
The mighty dreams of cosmopolitan state 
And led thy spirit far where none with thee could mate. 

But thy enraptured and delirious hour 
Was when the North arose and the earth's frame 
Trembled and convulsed beneath thy looks of power. 
Then thy presence like an embodied flame 
Swept the land and kindled in the sires' tame 
Inheritors the fierce resistless fires 
Of liberty. The low, obscurest name 
Rose up to manhood's high heroic ires. 
Consumed to death before the darkest shame 
That hell did ever cast on earth. The sires 
Rose up again from death with thy new fed desires. 

When forth they went, then at their hopeful head 
Thy lightning form did into action guide. 
Or down the front thy mighty wings outspread, 

. For dearer than thy unforsaken bride 
Are loyal hearts to thee. Though death did ride 
Thee down at first thou art unconquerable most. 
When storms and strength thy mighty struggles hide. 
Again, again, again, against the hell supported boast 
Thy lightning face burst on them, till terrified 
They fled from thee by river, plain, and coast 

And left thee torn but proud of thy enfranchised host. 

12 



And even yet o'er those triumphant fields 
Thy spirits pause and drink the deep delight 
Such place and men unto thy nature yields. 
The consecrated times and spots that light 
A nation's path through foul engendering night 
Are ever found where the unselfish fell 
To bring tlie freer state. Such place is bright 
Forever more and there the pasrlons s'^'ell 
Unto the wide distentions of thy might. 
When there we look into the azure bell 
Thy form doth on us flash with most immortal spell. 

Thou with a magnanimity divine 
Canst look from where thy sons are in their graves, 
And dost embrace within thy best design 
The peoples that would build upon the slaves, 
Though their empire thou didst drive beneath the waves 
Of darkness, death and curse. Thy kind desire 
Eneompassest the selfish blind, and saves 
A remnant from their self-destroying ire; 
And unto these thy spirit ever craves 
To breath the best regenerating fire 
Of thy immortal heart, and may it all inspire! 

When the nation burst her hemispheral bound, 
Becoming a great cosmopolita)i power, 
When Life and Time the sought king-{ ommonor crowned 
And kinged the man who was his throne and tower, 
This azure deep and sun-effulgent bower 
W^as living with thy screams of wild delight, 
And from thy unseen summits on the hour 
Fell prophecies of vaster sweep and height. 
The glory of a nation's high endower 
Tbiou castest on her pompus pride and might, 
Is to inspire the world, defend and guide it right. 

Thou dost sweep the boundaries of the nation; 
Along the great lakes and forty-ninth line 
Thou sailest slow with calmest meditation, 
Down the Pacific coast thy watchful eyne 
Notes every point with purposes divine. 
Across the state and Gulf of Mexico 
A heavy weight upon thy spirits pine; 
But up the strong Atlantic coast the glow 
Of life in each metropolis like wine 
Renews thy heart, and there thou dost be&tow 
New portions of thyself in thy soul's overflow. 

13 



Then straight across Avith motion calm and slow 
Thy matchless form doth stately take her way. 
And close to earth as if it fain would know 
The trifles mere that on her line doth lay 
Thy searching eyes with their incessant play 
Sees every city, hamlet, field and stream. 
And every nook that hardly sees the day. 
From east to west as goes the golden gleam 
Of heaven and back again unto the Pilgrim's bay 
Thy flight oft goes, and more than we can dream 
Is gathered up to feed the hopes that in thee teem. 

Then from the north, the vital giving north. 
Where thou dost pause and turn unto the pole 
As to invite their fury to burst forth: 
Then amply to the south but all thy soul 
Reading the earth unto its heart, and the whole 
Resourceful fund of that maternal plain 
And treasures vast of silver, iron and coal 
The mountain ranges hide in many a vein. 
From north to south and back again as roll 
The mighty waters, so thou art often fain 
To sail and full survey the nation's heart and brain. 

Thy circuitous flight oft goes from state to state; 
And especially where the representatives 
Are council gathered to deliberate 
The course and deed which has the high ascensives. 
Upon some near and mighty throne that gives 
Thee sun-inspection, thy penetrating eyes 
Doth more than read the selfishness that lives 
Behind the veil and in the slim disguise 
Of politics corrupt. In thy celestial sieves 
Thou castest them, and never, never dies 
Their virtue oat of earth or place within the skies. 

But thy common course is in the altitudes 
Sublime of azure and the golden sun. 
Upon those heights thy spirit lives and broods 
Upon the nation; and more since it begun 
Those circling sweeps of triumph that run 
Like an ascending cone straight toward the throne 
Of noonday. What victorious trophies won 
From time and tyrants thine! What dreams are shown 
To thy immortal visions! What nation 
IJ.ke the nation thy high ideals own! 
And histories divine when these have been outgrown! 

14 



Thou hast nursed the nation to its height; 
Thou hast purged away the dark disniemberiug curse; 
Thou dost supply the golden visions bi-ight, 
The far ideals upon us free unpurse. 
If from such an infancy thou dost nurse 
The greatness and the majesty that lends 
This glory unto time and hope and verse, 
It is not strange thy spirit often rends 
The remnant of the ancient, ancient curse, 
And w^ith the great "to be," the present blends, 
And lifts up all our hearts as thine own wide distends. 

This late expansion, prosperity and peace 
Creates unrest for an earth encircling flight 
Beyoiid th^ states that rise in grand increase. 
Thy victorious citizen which the light 
Of thine own glorious nature doth bedight 
In giant stature, strength and character 
Now travels all the earth. The time is right 
To circumnavigate the globe and stir 
To life the slumbering nations of the night — 
To wake the dead and on the quick confer 
The blessings more divine than frankincense and myrrh. 

Then once around and far aloft on high — 
Wi'^h one vast sweep of all beholding sight — 
With one vast tide of feeling that fills thy 
Faith sustaining being — with one vast might 
That girds thy frame with omnipotential right. 
Then in the splendors of the setting sun 
Thou vanishest. But as thy soul of light 
Descends the steps of heaven the watching nation 
Beholds the west so insupportably bright 
Some age anew seems gloriously begun, 
Or prophecies sublime of what may yet be won. 

As thou dost near the Asiatic shore 
And hoverest o'er the teaming populations 
Of life's benumbing customs from the hoar 
\ntiquities, divinest agitations 
Scarcely stir for thy enthroned creations 
Are strange and far to their uplifted eyes. 
All that thou art on thy celestial stations 
Of spirit liberty can only raise 

A dumb and sightless stare. Even on such nations • 
Some spirit sparks thou rainest from the skies 
Some unborn hero soul to wake and energize. 

15 



still sailing west from thy sublime survey 
Thou beholdest the bulwarked breasted tyrannies 
Of Europe's far horizon. Thou obscurest day 
F'or them, for their deformed indignities 
On human kind awakes the all that is 
Within Ihy sunlike soul, and thy lightning dashes 
Strike judgment on the crimson principalities. 
In the darkness gigantic fear lashes 
The throne and powers down, down to the abyss. 
Within the trodden, sparkless, cindered ashes 
A dream that fell from thee with life electric flashes. 

But farther west; Oh what a boundless shout 
Doth shake the earth, as the nations that conceived 
And cradled Liberty in many a rout 
By sea and land and mount have now relieved 
The transcendental energies they received 
By thy supreme and infinite delight! 
Their spirits mc-unt to thee as stones are heaved 
By the titanic, omnipotential might 
Of the earth's volcanic heart; or as a grieved 
Liberator beholds the vision bright, 
Attracted is or flies to thee upon the height. 

England, the mother of the modern world, 
The first defense of man's inherent right. 
The Gibralter strength that oft has hurled 
The tyrant and the tyrannies of night 
Into the gulf, is so shaken by the sight 
Of thy congenial spirit that her foundations 
Seem to break from Europe's chain of might. 
By thy inspire and glorious exaltations 
Even her dead arise. In armor bright 
With mighty shouts that shake the elder nations 
They watched the western flight of thy world ambulations. 

Never yet did the morning'-g opening eyes 
Behold the sun ascend the restless ocean 
With gladder heart than when thy sons arise 
To welcome thee from thy long ceaseless motion 
That resteth not but with thy heart's devotion. 
Traffic, pleasure, prosperity and pride 
Are disenchanted, and every common notion 
Doth yield its place unto the mighty tide 
That swelleth up with infinite emotion. 
What gratitude and admiration ride 
To meet thee on thy course and follow at thy side! 

16 



Then straight to Washington: Upon the cloud- 
Like summit of that renowned Corinthian 
Pillar raised for thee thy mighty wings are bowed 
To rest again among thy closest kin. 
That congregated host which thou dost win 
Look not to thee with more divine desires 
Than thou on them and theirs, for not within 
The whole round earth are better sons and sires 
Or freer states though all are touched with sin. 
Not yet are we to the height of thy aspires. 
Yet here thy bosom feels most kindred to thy fires. 

Then to the great centers of population 
Thy kindly flight doth take another course: 
Philadelphia and New York's congregation 
Thou hoverest o'er. Boston, the source 
Of life is dear to thee. Buffalo and each concourse 
On the lakes, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago 
And Milwaukee thy heart doth reinforce. 
The twin cities, Seattle, San Francisco, 
Denver, New Orleans and St. Louis course 
Thy blood afresh. Homeward thou dost go 
Viewing Cincinnati, Pittsburg and Baltimore aglow. 

Nor dost thou disdain the church. Upon her spire 
That is the nearest thing to heaven on earth, 
Thcu often dost alight. The worshipers choir 
Thy praise with next to their sublimest mirth 
Which thou acceptest well, for the church's birth 
Disowns thee not, but their God-victorious might 
Hast fought thy battles and given both the girth 
And center of hell's kingdom to thy right. 
Yea! When thou seekest strength and weight and "worth 
Thou seekest not in the politics that blight 
But in his high born sons whom God makes free and bright. 

O'er the college thou pausest in thy flight 
And searchest here for those immortal hopes 
Which thou canst stir with passion's golden might 
To lead the state that often blindly gropes 
Or staggers and is lost upon the slopes 
Of life. The spirit of intelligence 
Is close and kin to thee, and ever opes 
The eyes and feeds the heart with such intense, 
Passionate devotions, that life's envelopes 
Which ever blind the creatures of the sense 
Can never blind her sons though storms are dark and dense. 

17 



Here and there beneath the morning's smile 
Stand bands of hope that round a teacher pace. 
They search the sky, till through a cloud's defile 
She points a speck, which found they faintly trace 
Its motions. What shouts of gladness embrace 
The vision new on life's young infant eyes? 
But thou descendest and thy celestial grace 
Burns to the soul, the soul that in thee lies. 
How oft, how oft along their mortal race! 
They watch the azure splendors of Uie skies, 
Where though for moments lost thy presence on them flies. 

WTien two score seasons into music chime 
And give the soul distentions of the years — 
With knowledge of the tyrannies of time 
And gratitude's divine unbidden tears^ ' 

With service to thy spirit in the spheres • 
And love to all thatmakes'the^ what thou art — 
With faith above whatever now appears 
They stand" again and on the skies they chart 
Thy presence. Under thee a state rears 
Itself and feeds from they divinest heart 
True spirit liberty and all thou dost impart. 

Once more they stand with four-score winter snows 
Upon their heads and lift their eyes to thee, 
For in their hearts thy vital spirit glows 
And maketh age the dawn of immortality — 
Once more before they pass away to be- = 

Come citizens of the cosmbpolitan state v; 

Of strength and' truth and love^ and purity ' '-'^ 

That somewhere must unbosom wide its gate 
Among the stars of vast eternity. 
They solemn pause and their spirits satiate 
With thy immortal powers no night of death can weigh. 

As once on Gettysburg stood the one great 
Heroic figure of a hundred years, 
And round him close his ministers of state 
And soldier chiefs rejoicing though in tears: 
Aloft they looked and through a cloud of fear.s 
Thy form they then beheld in glorious flight 
Straight toward the sun, or toward the blinded spheres 
That brighter shine beyond the noonday's sight. 
Though blood and death upon their eyes and ears 
The prophet's eye in vastest lines of light 
Sought then to map thy course upon the boundless height. 

18 



So would the soul of the regenerated state 
Which has been born and fed and fired by thee 
Penetrate into the future and antedate 
The triumphs and the courses yet to be. 
But Oh alas! The sad infirmity 
Of time's destructive selfishness doth blind 
And stay the visions of eternity. 
What is to be is curtained from the mind 
Of wisdom and all but those who live to see; 
Still deep desire within a course has signed 
Of presence, power and rule among our human kind. 

Drink deep, drink deep the radiance of the morn! 
Baptize thy soul in the east and western seal 
The north and south pass into thee unshorn! 
And in the sun thy flight still nearer be, 
And circle in the calm eternity! 
The elemental essence that free 
Themselves upon the azure altitudes, 
Oh absorb them all in thrice-fold purity! 
Be thou forever throned where liberty broods 
Upon the times of high futurity! 
Scatter golden hopes and dreams in multitudes 
To sing unto the earth millennial interludes! 

Where e'er the sight of the enthroned oppressor 
In all the earth shall strike thy blindless eyes — 
Wherever Freedom rises the redressor 
To sell themselves in glorious sacrifice — 
Behold, behold! And from thy azure skies 
Dart like a lightning bolt upon thy foes 
And free the accumulated judgment that flies 
Like an avalanche of wrath and overthrows 
The purple dynasties. Oh energize 
The births divine with richest overflows 
Than they have ever dreamed or strongest mortal knows! 

Break thou the barriers that circumscribe 
. Thy territorial lines, and emancipate 
Thy spirit's domination to every tribe 
Of the vast unguardained globe, though their estate 
Be high or low. The whole terrestrial weight 
Of empire do thou sustain, and be the breast 
And mighty heart that passion palpitates 
The citizen of the world. Be thou possessed 
Of the universal heart and thou it mate 
With the cosmopolitan kingdom of the blessed, 
Still leading up the world unto its final rest. 

19 



Then far aloft within the golden sun, 
Thy spirit's circles in a course diurnal 
Around the globe forevermore Oh run! 
Rain thou upon the host the high maternal 
Inspirations to write earth's daily journal, 
And nurture up the godlike mind and breast 
Of immortality! Rain, rain the vernal 
Recreations in and round the race of unoppressed 
And liberated man! The great supernal 
Soul of splendor with pure effulgence blest 
Upon thy world and works forevermore will rest. 

TO UNCLE SAM. 

All hail to the man of the western sphere, 

The man that is man indeed! 
Bring the ancient king and the landed peer 

To measure the man we breed. 
He has scepter, throne and an empire vast. 

Place, honor and rank and birth. 
In man that is man has old nature cast 
The gifts that outweigh the earth. 

He's the man of the ripe, round earth. 

The hope of his mother's mirth. 
The elements, passion and power 
Enthroned him and crown with endower. 
The man of the ripe, round earth. 

Both the north and south, both the east and west. 

Mount, river and pulsing plain. 
Fed the elements raw to his bulwarked breast 

And fire to his lightning brain. 
Like a granite base, like a mountain head. 

As strong as the earth's back bone; 
Tall, erect and wise and immortal fed. 

He's a man that the world can own. 

He's the man of the ripe, round earth, etc. 

From sea to sea, from gulf to the line, 

He travels as never a king. 
From mountain and plain, sea, city and mine 

Hosts swift to his banners spring. 
Man is true to man as earth to the earth 

When man and the elements probe. 
And the masses rise in a nobler birth 

To follow him round the globe. 

He's the man of the ripe, round earth, etc, 

20 



'TiF a greater world and a greater man 

On the morning's golden skies. 
Every day Life strikes out a higher plan 

And a higher state must rise. 
To the vision high from the strain and strife 

The Republic hopes in thee, 
Thou man of its birth, of its higher life, 
Faith, freedom and destiny. 

He's the men of the ripe, round earth, 

The hope of his mother's mirth. 
The elements, passion and power. 
Enthrone him and crown with endower, 
The man of the ripe, round earth. 

A NATIONAL SONG— NO. 1. 
Tune: Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. Try to sing this. 

Oh Union, the first of the nations! 

Oh States joined with freedom as king! 
As mountains are strong in their stations 

Around Thee we stand and will sing. 
Thy States be forever united! 

No star from its splendor e'er pale! 
Each sister unblighting, unblighted! 
Hail, hail Mighty Union, Oh hail! 
Hail, hail Mighty Union, Oh hail! 

The States of our birth, strength and pride! 
Each State and the Union forever! 

Hail, hail through all time and all tide! 

The Pilgrims, their sons and their daughters. 

With liberty, faith, God and hope. 
Bold steered through the untraveled waters 

To build on this rock frowning slope. 
They conquered with nature's wild passion; 

An empire with virtue did sow; 
To their spirit and high, kingly fashion. 
Grow, grow Mighty Union, Oh grow! 
Grow, grow Mighty Union, Oh grow! 

The States of our birth, strength and pride- 
Each State and the Union forever! 

Grow, grow through all time and all tide! 

When the Mother became the oppressor 
And gave us the sword, not the shield, 

A Washington rose the redressor, 
His name on thy forehead is sealed. 

21 



When division again shook the nation, 

And trembled each pillar and arch, 
A Lincoln restored thee to station, 

March, march Mighty Union, Oh march. 
March, march Mighty Union, Oh march! 

The States of our birth, strength and pride! 
Each State and the Union forever! 

March, march through all time and all tide! 

Thy brow be encircled with glory! 

Thy heart filled with faith, love and truth! 
Thy fame be embalmed in our story 

By manhood, by age and by youth! 
A Wisdom! A Power! A Defender! 
A Wealth giving nations thy gain! 
A Virtue! An Honor! A Splendor! 

Reign, reign Mighty Union, Oh reign. 
Reign, reign Mighty Union, Oh reign! 

The States of our birth, strength and pride! 
Each State and the Union forever! 

Reign, reign through all time and all tide! 



A NATIONAL SONG — NO. 2. 



The mountains with echoes are ringing; 

The plains with responses are strong; 

Thf winds the old forests are swinging ; 

The seas are in surges of song. 

Old nature is waking the nation; 

Her spirit of lite is like wings; 

All passion and power in elation 

Arise in the chorus that sings. 

Oh Nation, the home and defender 

Of Liberty, hope and the free! 
Great Spirit, allegiance we tender 
In songs like the surge of the sea. 

Here life is as strong as the mountains; 

Rich, rich as our wheat-billowed plains; 
Sw«-et, sweet as the song of the fountains; 

Free, free as the bird and her strains; 
Here man is in man's highest fashion; 

A man here out-balances kings; 
To think is a fervor of passion; 

My country before me upsprings. - 

Oh Nation, the home and defender, etc. 

22 



Old Boston is singing the glory: 

San Francisco, the golden, replies; 
The twin cities trumpet the story; 

St. Louis is shaking the skies. 
The continent heaves like the ocean; 

The masses are swelling with pride; 
Oh Spirit, behold the devotion 

That round and beneath thee doth ride! 
Oh Nation, the home and defender, etc* 

On, onward, my Country! Thy marches 

Are leading the nations of earth. 
The future and azure high arches 

Are ringing Thee welcome of mirth. 
The hopes of the world and the ages 

Are looking and leaning en Thee. 
On, onward, Oh onward, as sages 
Have dreamed of the nation to be! 
Oh Nation, the home and defender 
Of Liberty, hope and thee free! 
Great Spirit, allegiance we tender 
In songs like the surge of the sea. 



A FOURTH OF JULY SONG. 

\rise, oh arise! 'Tis the Fourlh of July! - 
A glorious dawn is on earth and the sky. 
The m.orning inviteth and calls in suorise 
To march with the armies that round us arise. 
Today is the day when the nation was born; 
Old earth and. her sons with a gladness is torn. 
Republican State! Oh Democracy great! 
With liberty, life and all passions elate 
We rise and we march and around Thee we ring, 
Allegiance and honor and praises we sing. 

The fathers who fathered and founded the state. 
The m-others who mothered and nourished it great, 
Behold them, behold! In colonial guise 
They're marching right into the morning's bright eyes. 
Today is the day when the nation was born, etc. 

The sons and the daughters of earlier years 
With brawniest strength defied nature and fears. 
The chopper and plowman and builder abreast 
Are marching before us with passions of zest. 

Today is the day when the nation was born, etc. 

23 



The army and navy with honors divine 
Who died for the state on the fiercest front line. 
Behold ihem, behold them! In marches they go 
That shaketh the globe both of friends and of foe. 
Today is the day when the nation was born, etc. 

Look, look! Who are these? The immortals most great 
Have descended to earth for our honors of state. 
Tis Washington, Franklin, great Lincoln and Grant 
A.nd ail the immortals we honor and chant. 

Today is the day when the nation was born, etc. 

North, easr, south and west with musicians on march. 
With playing and singing shake pillar and arch. 
Earth's passions upspring, the true citizen found, 
The Fourth of July to the state has him bound. 

Today is the day when the nation was born; 

Old earth and her sons with a gladness is torn 

Republican State! Oh Democracy great! 

With liberty, life and all passions elate. 

We rise and we march and around Thee we ring, 

Allegiance and honor and praises we sing. 



THE UNITED STATES FOREVER! 

Great nations live. The splendors rise 

Along the circling eons. 
Each loyal race allegiance cries 

And shakes the earth with paeons 
In this new sphere old nature brings 

Her last of state creations. 
Another race allegiance sings 
And shakes the elder nations. 

My S^^ate and these United States, 

Thy praises cease shall never! 
Oft now and then I'll fling the weights 

That would unconscious sever. 
And shout for these United States, 
The United States forever! 



The north and south each other greet: 
"Thou art my very brother!" 

The east and west together meet: 
"A son of my old mother!" 

From shore to shore, from gulf to line, 

24 



Are men strong as the mountains, 
Are women fair with life divine, 
Children as glad as fountains. 

My State and these United States, etc. 

Here Life has struck her richest roots; 

Her boughs reach unto heaven; 
The heavy laden ripest fruits 

Are sheltered from all levin. 
Here Liberty, the Lord of life, 

To kingly sense is bringing 
The masses from the night and strife, 

And round him they are singing: 
My State and these United States, etc. 

The future calls. Who, who shall lead 

The world in higher courses? 
Oh Nation great, forever breed 

The peaceful man and forc(is! 
But when entangled in the strife 

Belt, belt the passions tighter! 
Still make our man the Lord of life 

Yet leave in him the fighter. 

My State and these United States, etc. 

Be M'ise and just; be strong and free; 

Advancing, clean, victorious ; 
Translating into thine and thee 
Thy higher soul so glorious. 
Forever let great Liberty 

Lead on thy mighty marches! 
Thy future then shall brighter be 
Along these golden arches. 

My State and these United States, 

Thy praises cease shall never! 
Oft now and then I'll fling the weights 

That would unconscious sever, 
And shout for these United States, 
The United States forever! 



A MICHIGAN STATE SONG. 

Oh hail to the state that is girded round 
By th€ elements strong and free! 

For the grand old nurse has Michigan bound 
By the virtues of the sea. 

25 



[n the very heart of a hemisphere 

By old nature's first decrees 
Our Michigan rose from the crystal clear 
As queen of the inland seas. 

We're the sons of the inland seas! 

The sons of the inland seas! 
For virtue, for counsel or war 
We will march on the line most fore. 
The sons of the inland seas. 

The spirit divine of the ocean vast 

Sweeps Michigan's passioned breast: 
A.nd the fierce north storms and the winter blast 

Feed her with a mighty zest. 
We will drink the airs; we invite the wind 

And stand like the old pine trees, 
Striking deeper roots, growing higher kind 

And manhood of unbent knees. 

We're the sons of the inland seas! etc. 

The ways and the wars and the heroes great 

Are past and forever done; 
Peace, virtue and thought are a higher state. 

And a better man must run. 
Be Michigan strong in the ways of peace! 

Let our toil unbreed disease! 
Let justice and right with our wealth increase. 

New happiness, health and ease. 

We're the sons of the inland seas! etc. 

Our Michigan stands to the forward years; 

Her sons and daughters arise; 
Fair Detroit leads such a line of peers 

As delights the nation's eyes. 
"Hail! Hail to the times! More shall hail to the years!" 

We cast on the lake-born breeze. 
With a strength and hope that can knew no fears. 
We're the sons of the inland seas. 

We're the sons of the inland seas! 

The sons of the inland seas! 
For virtue, for counsel or war 
We will march on the line most fore, 
The sons of the inland seas. 

26 



AN ARIZONA STATE SONG. 

Arizona! Arizona I 

Around the mountain peaks 
A mighty song of solemn sound 

Unto the moment speaks. 
And from the green and desert plains 

Still greater measures rise 
Till heaven and earth seem full of strains 
That to the nation cries: 
Arizona! Arizona I 

Arizona, let her go! 
All we have and are and hope for. 

For our friends and 'gainst the foe, 
For man and woman, state and right. 
Union, liberty and light, 
Arizona, let her go! 

Those miners on the mountain heights, 

The farmers in the vales. 
Those citizens of growing might. 

The ranchmen on the trails, 
From all the boundaries of the state. 

Oh, barken! Don't you hear? 
A song of growing measures great 
Is bursting on the ear: 
Arizona! Arizona! 

Arizona, let her go! 
All we have and are and hope for. 

For our friends and 'gainst the foe. 
For man and woman, state and right. 
Union, liberty and light, 
Arizona, let her go! 

The pioneers and fighters old 
Who battled with the wild. 
The children of a fairer mould 
New times are making mild. 
The past and future, sisters fair. 

All powers and forms of life 
Cast on the wild, unladen air 
Into the world of strife: 
Arizona! Arizona! 

Arizona, let her go! 
All we have and are and hope for. 

For our friends and 'gainst the foe. 
For man and woman, state and right. 
Union, liberty and light, 
Arizona, let her go! 

27 



Arizona! Arizona! 

The youngest of the states, 
But living in the elements 

She fronts the future fates. 
Unmindfal of the solemn powers 

Unto the sister throng, 
Like life's untutored tutored hours 
She thunders out a song: 
Arizona! Arizona! 

Arizona, let her go! 
All we have and are and hope for, 

For our friends and 'gainst the foe. 
For man and woman, state and right. 
Union, liberty and light, 
Arizona, let her go! 

A MISSOURI STATE SONG. 

Old Missouri! Old Missouri! 
What magic in the sound! 
I leap to life with passion rife 
And forward with a bound. 
Missouri is my native state; 

Missouri is ray home; 
To hear and see Missouri great, 
My passions rise and foam. 

Great Missouri! Strong Missouri! 

I feel thee in my heart, 
Both life and fire, hope and inspire 

Thou freely dost impnrt. 
Where sisters, soldiers congregate, 
Great Missouri! Strong Missouri! 
Old Missouri is my state! 

As virtue from the mountains high 

The river gives to Thee, 
Thy geyser fountains upward fly 

Imparting life to me. 
The rolling prairies of the north, 

The south land, rich in hills, 
The east and west like sisters blest 

Thy glowing spirit fills. 

Great Missouri! Strong Missouri! etc. 

A spirit vast above the state 

Wends watching to and fro. 
Oh hark and hear that trumpet clear: 

"Grow, grow, Missouri, grow!" 

28 



She sees the future's fruitful years 

That golden splendors arch. 
The mighty soul doth on us roll: 

"March, march, Missouri, march!" 

Great Missouri! Strong Missouri! etc. 

Where e'er I travel round the earth 

I often see and hear 
The old Missouri of my birth 

Upon my eye and ear. 
I think of her; mj^ passions foam 

Like tides of ocean strong, 
And hear her gently calling home 
With sweet, old cradle song. 

Great Missouri! Strong Missouri! 

I feel thee in my heart. 
Both life and fire, hope and inspire 

Thou freely dost impart. 
Where sisters, soldiers congregate 
Great Missouri! Strong Missouri! 
Old Missouri is my state! 

A NORTH DAKOTA STATE SONG. 

Oh my mother state, All hail! 
North Dakota shall prevail. 
The rich fountains in thy heart 
Burst and bubble, flow, impart, 
Till we feel thy passions rife 
Flooding us with boundless life. 
Hail, Oh North Dakota, hail! 
Thy full fountains in us spring. 
Mould, oh mould us in thy form 
As around thee now we sing: 
Hail, Oh North Dakota, hail! 
Though the fiercest storms assail. 
North Dakota shall prevail. 

Dreamed, designed and cast by fate 
For a noble, glorious state. 
Dwelling on the northern bound. 
Flinging bounty all around; 
Vast horizon, heightless height. 
Strength and virtue thee invite. 

Hail, Oh North Dakota, hail! etc. 

Fountains, winds and seas have song 
And the mountains bear the strong; 
But thy boundless prairie plains 

29 



Beareth Life and all her trains. 
Thou art mother of the breed 
That is chosen, chosen seed. 

Hail, Oh North Dakota, hail! etc.. 

We behold thy fields of life 
Growing green to harvest rife. 
Summer suns and winter storms 
Passion feeds and equal warms. 
North Dakota in me springs 
Till 1 feel on eagle wings. 

Hail, Oh North Dakota, hail! 
Thy full fountains in us spring. 
Mould, oh mould us in thy form 
As around thee now we sing: 
Hail, Oh North Dakota, hail! 
Though the fiercest storms assail 
North Dakota shall prevail. 

AN OREGON STATE SONG. 

I have heard the classic stories 

Of the mighty empires great. 
I have dreamed the golden glories 

Of the column, dome and gate. 
But I chose the ancient mother 

When I threw the dice of fate, 
Finding men that man can brother. 
And this Oregon, my state. 
Oh Oregon! Oh Oregon! 

Let all our borders ring! 
Mountains, forests, winds and waters. 
Mothers, sires and sons and daughters 

Far the mother's praises fling! 
To Oregon, to Oregon, 
To Oregon Oh sing! 

Lift was sore at old tradition; 

Thou hast placed me in the West. 
Man is bent to his condition; 

Thou hast given freedom blest. 
Lifp is hungry for life's passion; 

Thou art feeding crimson zest. 
Build in manhood's highest fashion; 

I am growing with the best. 

Oh Oregon! Oh Oregon! etc. 

30 



I have heard thy cities singing, 

Sing thy praises far and near. 
Farms and highland-forests swinging, 

Swing it out to all the sphere. 
There's a majesty of splendor, 

There's a march of high career, ■ 
There's a glorious train attender 

Round the mother that we cheer. 
Oh Oregon! Oh Oregon! etc. 

I am swept on by the vision 

Of the state that is to be, 
And I laugh in loud derision 

At some states that I can see. 
For my Oregon doth cherish 

A prophetic progeny, 
And the highlands love to nourish 
Life the straightest, strong and free. 
Oh Oregon! Oh Oregon! 

Let all our borders ring! 
Mountains, forests, winds and wat'^rs. 
Mothers, sires and sons and daughters. 

Far the mother's praises fling! 
To Oregon, to Oregon, 
To Oregon Oh sing. 

A COLORADO STATE SONG. 

"Colorado!" sing the fountains; 

"Colorado!" shout the mountains 
From the azure breasted skies. 

Field and forest, plain and river 

And each gold and silver giver 

Answer back with trumpet cries: 
Colorado! Colorado! 
We must ever sing of thee, 
For Life's glowing passioned powers 
Sweep us singing to the hours: 
Colorado! Colorado! 
Colorado mothered me! 

As the rivers to the ocean, 

As the ocean to earth's motion 

So go Colorado's sons. 
We have passed the eastern portal 
And have found ourselves immortal 

In the course that nature runs. 
Colorado! Colorado! etc. 

31 



All the nation on her marches 
Through the future's splendored arches 

Hark to Colorado's song. 
She is rising in her passion 
To her highest form and fashion 

Like a queen among the throng. 
Colorado! Colorado! etc. 

Take Life's pomp and pride and station; 

'Tis a danger to a nation; 

Men and manhood are the wealth. 

Colorado faileth never! 

Colorado stands forever, 
All sufficient to herself! 
Colorado! Colorado! 
We must ever sing of thee, 
For Life's glowing passioned powers 
Sweep us singing to the hours: 
Colorado! Colorado! 
Colorado mothered me I 

A WYOMING STATE SONG. 

Life, when she the world created 

Made Wyoming for her own. 
Passions, forms and glories mated 

For her dwelling and her throne. 
Mountains, vallej^s, grandeurs, splendors, 

Skies and winds and atmospheres 
She created for attenders 

And companions through the years. 

Young Wyoming! Wild Wyoming! 

Nature in her purest prime! 
Oh great Mother, from thee spring 

Strength to dream, to dare and climb. 
All thy sons forever sing: 
Live Wyoming, grow Wyoming, 
As Time's circles onward wing! 

Shadowed by these grandeurs solemn 

We are burdened to the earth. 
Deep inspired, strong as a column 

Comes another man to l5irth. 
He is backboned like the mountains, 
Granite-breasted, muscled-strong, 
Fed as from thy river fountains, 
Singing on his way a song. 

Young Wyoming! Wild Wyoming, etc. 

32 



Hear the morn on mountain singing: 

"This Wyoming is my throne." 
From the valleys echoes winging: 

"This Wyoming is my own." 
Hear each growing city ringing: 

"This Wyoming, her alone." 
Miners, herders, ranchmen flinging: 

"This Wyoming to the bone." 

Young Wyoming! Wild Wyoming, etc. 

Fill me with Wyoming's passion! 

I would drink it down like wine. 
Robe my spirit in her fashion. 

Roughness round the virtues fine. 
Claimed and branded, impulsed, sighted 

To Wyoming's best design. 
Make me, Mother, noble mighted 
Like old Nature's man divine. 

Young Wyoming! Wild Wyoming! 

Nature in her purest prime! 
Oh great Mother, from thee spring 

Strength to dream, to dare and climb. 
All thy sons forever sing: 
Live Wyoming, grow Wyoming, 
As Time's circles onward wing! 

A TEXAS STATE SONG. 

h harken and hear, for Nature's great soul 

t Panama calleth the continent's roll! 

he thunders out: "Texas!" and then with a bound 

'he answer comes forth in great rivers of sound: 

"Great Texas is here! Great Texas is here! 

As placed by the Mother with tenderness dear. 

Oh Nature divine to thee we are bound 

And answer thy call with a glorious sound. 

As full of thy life as thy life is of cheer. 

Great Texas is here! Great Texas is here!" 

h harken again! The Queen of the State 

alls horseman and leaders and citizens great. 

'rom liighlands and rivers, seas, cities and plains 

lesponses arise in immortalest strains: 

"Great Texas is here! Great Texas is here!' 

We bask in the splendor of heaven's bright sphere. 

With plenty and peace we are climbing a slope 



That fattens our cattle, green fattens our hope. 
Around thee we pledge an allegiance most dear, 
Great Texas is here! Great Texas is here!" 

Oh harken once more! Uncle Samuel has need; 
He fights at the wall and needs the old breed. 
"Help Texas, Oh help!" Then instant doth sound 
A thunderlike roar as of lions in bound: 

"Hold on Uncle Sam for great Texas is here! 

We're on the dead run. We are shaking the sphere. 

Each man in the state for the fiercest front line 

Is fretting and fuming, in chafe and in pine. 

We're now at thy side with the slogan all fear; 

Great Texas is here! Great Texas is here!" 

The modern soul is now calling the great 

In voice as sublime as the trumpets of fate. 

The nations all pause as the thunder doth fall; 

Hark! Hark! Who is next? "Great Texas" the call. 
"Great Texas is here! Great Texas is here! 
As strong as the whirlwinds and forests and mere. 
We're growing and climbing with passion sublime 
To match and to march the great spirits of time. 
Lrike mountains and rocks of the granite bound sphere, 
Great Texas is here! Great Texas is here!" 

AN OHIO STATE SONG. 

Oh harken and hear! To the south and the north 
A thunder like song as from mountains goes forth. 
The sons of Ohio from center to bound 
Are singing the song that the mother has found. 
Ohio, Ohio, the glory 

Of mother, son, daughter and sire! 
Ohio is blazing in story, 

Her breath is the breath of inspire! 
Ohio within me is springing. 
Ohio! Ohio! I'm singing. 

The cities, the towns and the villages small, 
The farmers and fields, forests, rivers and all 
Are joining the song and the measures that rise 
Are shaking the earth and like thunder the skies. 
Ohio. Ohio, the glory, etc. 

Ohio is fed from the center of earth 

For front of all life and the summits of worth, 

34 



For labors of peace and the battles of war. 
State, church and the home, camp, college and lore. 
Ohio. Ohio, the glory, etc. 

Beheld the proud mother! She mothers the great. 
The presidents, soldiers and leaders of state. 
Hayes, Harrison, Garfield, McKinley and Taft; 
She's proud of her sons and to herself laughed, 
Ohio, Ohio, the glory, etc. 

The sisters all hark on the borders around 
When Ohioans join in the glorious sound. 
A song like the sea with its passions and powers 
The sisters enchan* from the thrall of the hours. 
Ohio, Ohio, the glpry. etc. 

Ohio's great sons to the end of the earth 
Remember the state that has given them birth. 
Oft, often they jump to their feet with delight 
For memory brings old Ohio to sight. 
Ohio, Ohio, the glory 

Of mother, son, daughter and sire! 
Ohio is blazing in story. 

Her breath is the breath of inspire! 
Ohio within me is springing. 
Ohio! Ohio! I'm singing. 

LINCOLN. 

Oh nature great! Oh virtue of the nation! 
Oh spirit high, enthroned upon the height! 
A type supreme of higher soul creation 
That grows divine unto our mortal blight! 
Thou feedest to our far-uplifted sight 
The greatest need of life and time and nations, 
For thou wert one the powers of truth and right 
Sent into life, and Tip our hard gradations 
Trained thee for strife against the storms of ni|2^ht. 
Victorious soul! Spirit of inspirations! 
One of the dreams of man! One of God's high crtations! 

Nature was cruel and yet most kind to thee 
When thou wert cast down at the base of life 
For at the base great things and men must be. 
Thy towering strength, ungainly gaunt, was rife 
With jest and many a sarcastic knife 
Cut into thee. The kind old rugged nurse 

35 



Bound up thy wounds, and with a Spartan fife 
Bade thee to stand and face the powers that curse. 
She put thee up against the growing strife 
And with thy growth did stir the elements worse, 
Until at last, alone, strong as the universe.' 

Oft, often locked in many a mortal strife, 
The vanquished spared or flung oft" bruised or dead. 
Thou, rising up with fountains of new life, 
Didst front the men who shook earth with their tread. 
Into the pass where hosts in vain had bled 
The mother thrust and knew that thou wouldst van 
The world, for thy humanity was red 
For generous life and for all men did plan. 
Strong was the arm, high, high the lighted head. 
Wise, wise the eye that did the nation scan 
When thy organic strength took up the cause of man. 

There was a day v/hen Liberty's young nation 
Desired a man to save the institutions. 
"Arise, arise!" she cried in desperation, 
"Against the storm^^ traitors and execution?? 
That threaten death to time's best evolutions!" 
Thou earnest forth. The nation saw. Great .Right 
Sprang up and spurned hev abject prostitutions. 
Ready for war but shrinking from the fight, 
Forth to the strife, defying soft solutions. 
Into the black and lightning flashing night 
To victory they went with thy contagious might. 

Through those four years, blood-stained and stormed and 
What heavy weights and crimson, crimson tears [plowed. 
Thy spirit shed and often body bowed! 
The stress of war eclipsed the world with fears. 
But thou wert found, one of creation's peers, 
A grand old type that man forever hails 
And stations high to crown these mortal spheres. 
Great leader strong, gath'ring the line that fails, 
A hero true the battle front reveres, 
Courage and faith that o'er assault prevails, 
A master man of men no time or greatness pales. 

High, generous and mrst magnanimous soul? 
Fine quality, the rarest in the earth! 
Part of the Infinite whose virtues roll 
And now and then find being from the dearth. 

86 



Man's moulds were broke; time's standards of all worth 
Destroyed: ideals old dethroned, and new 
Conceptual forms rose to immortal birth. 
Plain, simple, honest, common and warm and true, 
Thy rich, magnanimous scul of savins^ niirth 
Leaas hence the mind to the highest heia^hts we view, 
And man and life ftnd time in form divine renew. 

Leader, martyr, prophet and president, 
Where the great cosmopolitan councils meet, 
Those spirits vast unanimous in consent 
Invite thee up to their presiding seat. 
Great congregation, where the ages greet 
Each other, and time's mightiest souls unite 
To rain on earth the life that is our meat. 
Out of your hosts of genius, lore and might, 
Courage and faith, self-sacrifice and feat. 
Have ye but one that measures to his height? 
A higher type of man to rule you as his right? 

Though far aloft and growing more divine, 
Wider the years and intervening space. 
Rare magic powers out of thy spirit twine 
And bind thee close, still closer to our race. 
The ripe humanity upon thy face, 
Thy warm hand-clasp and eyes inviting kind 
Draw into life out of our hearts' er^brace 
"Father," "Brother," "Prophet," and names that bind 
The hearts of men across all time and place. 
Oh spirit great! Though thee ourselves we find: 
Thou feedest us with life; through thee we are divined. 

THE WORLD'S DESIRE. 

What is written has been writ 

And he that reads can read. 
But until the heart is bit 

To bleed and bleed and bleed 
Thou wilt never have the wit 

To see or feel Life's ne^d. 

Why is human life so lean? Why failure. 
Disappointm-ent, loss, despondency, remorse? 
The spirit's high endowments and the force 
Of immortality doubtless should insure 
Men high careers of progress, and should cure 
The sad disorders of our state. 

37 



Vast potencies, divine and great, 
And prophecies that through all storms endure 
Are felt in will and heart and brain 
And kindle 'neath life's stress and strain. 
Led on by dreams no dream should e'er deceive 
Ideal worlds pass by and us behind them leave. 

Why should the individual and the race 
Be such fiascoes? What infinite ideal 
Can justify the earth's dark history, and repeal 
The waste of human life, the gifts and grace 
Of billioned souls whom chaos doth embrace? 

One, only one of all our line 

We dream has reached the goal divine. 
His few redeemed were found where ruin reels 

Helpless to the abysmal deep. 

All else is failure. Oh the reap 
Of death! Oh the harvests vast of sin and hell! 
Oh the loss and bitterness. God. God alone can tell! 

Oh Love! Two long millenniums have rolled around 
Since thy High Priest with sacrifice divine 
Burst with eftulgent brightness on the line 
Of selfishness. With tremendous bound 
Some sinful hearts leaped to his sight and sound. 

The promise long has been delayed: 

Hate, greed and strife are still unstayed, 
But stronger grow as each with others twine. 

Still evil yet doth reign supreme; 

All clearly see in the lights that stream 
The world is unredeemed. The Christ who died 
And His creeds of love and life each day are crucified. 

The high enthroned, purple and crowned transgressors 
Of position, power, wealth and intelligence. 
O'er the wide hosts of helpless ignorance 
Become still more the strong and proud oppressors. 
The union and new acts of these possessors 

Upon the new horizon's bound 

Cast most portentous sight and sound. 
What dark, chaotic dreams will issue hence 

From want and hunger's outraged sleep 

If once their tempest passions leap? 
The strife of life intensifies each day; 
The weak are beasts of burden, the strong are beasts of. prey. 

Oh Love, ail things are calling out for thee! 
The voice of earth and all her generations 



With thunder song of mountain intonations 
Is gathering round thy throne of victnry 
In intercession for the liberty 

From this bondage of corruption 

Into the glory of the children 
Of God. Through Time's strife and agitations, 

Though bound with adamantine chain, 

Though crucified and often slain. 
All things oft sing with wider echoing tones 
For thy millennial earth, millennial sons and thrones. 

All things now call and call alone for thee. 
Time like an aged sire, wrinkled and white, 
But with his rich experiences doth slight 
And scorn all panaceas that would free 
The social heart from its long leprosy. 

He has seen every generation 

With some sure cure its courses run 
Then leave the world with still more deadly blight. 

No age has diagnosis sure 

And if it had, Oh could it cure? 
No mortal power regenerates the heart 
And all things without this but more disease impart. 

The very time's developments of power, 
Knowledge and conquest over nature debate 
The enfranchisement of man from this weight 
Of centenarian ill. Is this endower 
For selfish ends? Does it not invite the hour 

Of disestablishment to throne 

Thee over all supreme alone, 
In honor, majesty and sovereign state? 

The gifts and powers of heaven above 

Are only safe in hands of love; 
In other hands a curse they must untwine 
But with thee they are safe and grow still more divine. 

The discords of our unredeemed humanity 
That strike despair upon all mortal ears 
Ascend on high; reaching celestial spheres 
There is a change, and a minor harmony 
Of life's unlanguaged pain is heard by thee. 

Man's passion-blind and erring play 

Are not to thee just what they say. 
When thou translatest earthly hopes and fears 

A prayer is oft in guilty deed. 

We know thine eyes with sorrows bleed, 

39 



And thou canst hear by sorrow's mystic art 
The worlds travailing pain as prayers unto thy heart. 

Around the iron guarded gate of death 
Soon gather those that crowd the portal birth. 
Broken, torn and sick and robbed of strength and mirth, 
They come to yield up sorrow's burdened breath. 
Each generation there this prayer hath solemn saith: 

"Oh not for me, Oh not for me, 

High kingdom of eternity! 
By all I wished but found not here on earth, 

By life and ruin, loss and pain, 

By my immortal nature slain, 
By all thou art and will be in thy day. 
For coming generation^ Oh haste. Oh haste, I pray!" 

Thy first descended v5ons of pure inspire 
Whom thou hast sent from thy celestial clime 
To hold the faith, and with glad song to chime 
The golden age feel thy prophetic fire 
Within their hearts. Each gathers the desire 

So scattered wide in man and thing. 

And unto thee their sorrows sing. 
Sing on. Oh poet-priests! Oh be not dumb 

Unto this age of strife and gold! 

Though they hear not nor ye behold. 
With triumphant joy and deathless faith sum 
Up the M'orld's travailing cry: "Come, come. Oh kingdom, come! 

"Come, come, Oh long delayed and golden age! 
Age of the world's unlanguaged deep desire. 
Her travailing hope and visions that inspire 
Her high, victorious hours! Age that will gage 
Itself by the. awful curse and darkest page 

Of earth's yet unregenerate heart! 

Age of the poet's song! Age that art 
The embodiment of all the higher 

Visioned dreams which the celestial spheres 

Have rained on pain and love and tears! 
Age of divine purpose, fulness and employ, 
From heaven. Oh descend and build on time's destroy!" 

"Oh age, bend down and lay thy passioned heart 
Upon the nurseless spirit of the earth! 
Her long and wintry courses since her birth 
Have frozen her forbidding the impart 
That glorifies with thy celestial art. 
Come! Kiss thy infant and caress, 

40 



And with thy warmth her spirit bless! 
Thou crimson life! Thou pure maternal birth! 

Thou warm divine self-sacrifice! 

Oh bid the earth's dead soul arise! 
Then through her dense, diseased material frame 
Thy all renewing life will burst forth like a flame." 

"Touch thou the earth's unemancipated king, 
And with the contact of thy immortal heart 
Oh disenthrall his spirit from the m£irt 
Of selfishness! Oh let his manhood spring 
From time's long travailing agonies, and wing 

Unto the infinite ideal 

Thou dost upon his eyes unseal! 
Dethroned, plundered, profaned, enslaved, a part 

Of groaning nature, unconscious. 

And trampled down by beasts and sense. 
His hour of soul enfranchisement be now. 
And they investiture upon the morning's brow!" 

"Thou hast the full resources for this life; 
Thou canst destroy the hoary iniquities 
Bequeathed to us by the antiquities 
Of crime. Some few leaders of this strife, 
Some chiefs, some towers of self, thy lightning knife 

Must blast and hurl into the dust 

To stay time's swift, contagious lust. 
O'er the wide host thy soft benignities 

And arching grace from heaven above, 

As o'er the sick a mother's love, 
Can smother down time's heritage of ill 
And nurse out of the earth a race that thou dost fill." 

"Thou canst destroy the infernal dogs of war, 
And the politics of hell by which their 
Course is constant driven. Panic with her bare 
And hunger-bitten hordes will fly before, 
And poverty be exiled from thy shore. 

The brute, the brothel and saloon 

Will break for good their long commune 
And sink with curse to each infernal lair. 

Greed, strife, crime, sorrow and decay. 

Ignorance, diseases and dismay, 
All, all of sin, of selfishness and blight 
Shall fly before thy face as darkness from the light.** 

"Come thou on earth with thy exhaustless heart! 
Thou hast celestial and supremest powers. 
Thou hast the azure and immortal dowers 
Of sun-giving heaven. Thou hast and art 

41 



The spirit pure that in each angel flowers 

To splendor, joy and purity. 

The nature of divinity 
Doth dwell in thee and thou canst it impart. 

Sow, sow thy potencies of life, 

And from the very heart of strife 
Another world with beauty and delight 
Will forth from chaos rise toward heaven's golden height. 

"Come: Bring the royal institutes of state! 

The high, supreme, majestic, honored laws; 

And kin to these those reverential awes 

Thy youth and age delight to contemplate 

As we behold the statues of the great. 

Virtue, justice, truth and righteousness 
Thy nations shall with splendor dress. 

Faith, love, hope, joy, magnanimousness, applause, 
Shall be the ornaments of gold 
Each brow and heart shall then unfold. 

Come, come, Oh state! What business, rule and home 
Thy bases shall support, enkindle shall thy dome!" 



"As thy institutions are above the past 
Bring thou the man that is enthroned on them; 
The man who is his throne and diadem, 
And in whom the Infinite has glassed 
His nature's passions. Oh bring him on the blast 

And wreckage of this mortal kind! 

Oh immortal heart and mind! 
Spirit divine! The world's pinnacle! The gem 

Of all creation! Oh mate 

Of seraphim! Oh incarnate 
Son of God! The hosts of eternity 
kre bending from their thrones to look with joy oh thee." 

"Oh man divine, who would not long for thee! 
Thou crowning all art with devotion crowned; 
And from devotion's heart riches supreme abound 
As blessings from the azure purity. 
Thy passions with the white intensity 

Of love fills every welcome birth 

Of thy uncrowded crowded earth. 
Oh how the new created heavens resound • 

With universal harmony! 

One redeemed humanity !- 
One human brotherhood! One family race! 
One many passioned heart that one heart does embrace!" 

42 



"Come, come, Oh long delayed and golden age! 
Age of all passions, purities and powers! 
Age of all ideals and sublimest hours 
Of execution! Oh age that will gage 
The heightless height and boundless reach that cage 

Themselves in frail humanity! 

Oh age of immortality 
Which the fountains of the infinite assuage! 

Come! Oh rise on time's foundation stones 

The splendors of thy everlasting thrones! 
Come thou upon the morning's golden pinions 
A.nd round the feet of God build thou thy last dominions!" 

A DETROIT CITY SONG. 

The world with vast cities is builded, 

And vaster today than of old. 
The domes and the arches were gilded, 

But now Life is building with gold. 
Though burnished and flashing with splendor 

The old or the new on us shine, 
To one my allegiance I tender, 
"Detroit, Detroit for mine!" 

Detroit, Detroit, my Mother! 

Detroit, my heart and my home! 
Detroiters march on forever 

As strong as the nobles of Rome. 

Detroit is young, green and growing, 

Bright, beautiful, happy and tall; 
Her passions that crimson are glowing 

The natives and strangers enthrall. 
Here life at its least is worth living. 

And life at its best is divine; 
As nature to us we are giving; 

"Detroit, Detroit for mine!" 

Detroit, Detroit, my Mother! etc. 

The twin cities look from their fountains; 

There Cleveland is watching in fear; 
San Francisco peeps over the mountains. 

The East and the South at us peer. 
Uncle Sam on the Eagle is riding, 

Surveying his cities benign; > 

He shouts with a swelling and priding: 

"Detroit, Detroit for mine!" 

Detroit, Detroit, my Mother! etc. 

For the city, the state and the nation, 

43 



The times and the globe we will live. 
Bach one in his gift and his station 
The best of his best free will give. 
All hail to the world in its swinging! 

The arts and the ages untwine! 
Down through the far future is ringing: 
"Detroit, Detroit for mine!" 

Detroit, Detroit, my Mother! 

Detroit, my heart and my home! 
Detroiters march on forever 

As strong as the nobles of Rome. 



A PITTSBURGH CITY SONG. 

My city grows out of the earth. 

Right out of the center of fire, 
Right up through the granite-like girth, 

Right up to the clouds and still higher. 
Old nature has mothered the birth. 

Original element sire 
The city, the man and his mirth 
And spirits that glowing inspire. 

Pittsburghers are born in the fire; 
Are nursed with the strength of desire; 
Are forged in the furnaces white, 
Trained, girded, and armoured with might. 
Old earth on us stampeth her seal, 
Pittsburghers, the workers of steel. 

Here Nature her furnaces feed. 

Blasts roaring and masses of coal; 
Iron mountains go into their greed. 

Rivers molton and glowing they roll. 
Did Vulcan e'er have such a breed. 

Muscled body and more muscled soul? 
That ingot the furnace has freed 
A man makes or takes as its toll. 

Pittsburghers are singing the song 
Of the wise, the skilled and the strong, 
The first of the elements, fire. 
Feeds us from the mother and sire. 
Old earth on us stampeth her seal, 
Pittsburghers, the workers of steel. 

The smoke shadows darken our day; 

Flame splendors leap up through the night; 

44 



Great anvils and hammers all play 

And rolling mills groan In their might. 
Plate, eyebeam, rail, girder and stay. 

For mine, mountain, sea, city, height. 
To build the great world on its way 
We work and we sing with delight. 

Pittsburghers are greater than kings 
And shame the high splendor that clings. 
From ores of the earth we create 
The basis of man and of state. 
Old earth on us stampeth her seal. 
Pittsburghers, the workers cf steel. 

Here Life with another world plan 
Thinks far for the ages before; 
The blue prints, the means and the man 
From the elements glowing doth pour. 
A ruling and world building clan 

Of steel, its strength, structure and lore, 
Foundations and turret all scan, 
We are and shall be evermore. 

Pittsburghers stand up in the years. 
The masters of time and her peers. 
We build a new world and new hour 
With forces and structures of power. 
Old earth on us stampeth her seal, 
Pittsburghers, the workers of steel. 

NEW YORK CITY SONG. 

Oh where are the cities of splendor, 

The ancient and modern fames? 
Eclipsed is the glory they tender 
As paleth the sun-dying flames. 
Though Rome, Athens, London and Paris 

Are stately in royalest robes, 
New York is the queen of the future 
And ruleth the course of the globes 

New York crowns the world and her stations. 

Her name doth my passions uncork. 
Of all the great cities and nations. 
Forever, forever New York! 

Here life flpweth down like a river, 

With mountain-fed torrent and strong; 

We take the great strength of the giver. 
Shout, shout with the gladness of song. 

45 



We march with the march of ages; 

Drink, drink of the mother's young life. 
To The fiercest front battle that rages, 

Rush, rush to partake of the strife. 

New York crowns the world and her stations, etc. 

Here, here are Life's greatest creations. 

Great men and their doings sublime. 
Men stand on their granite foundations 

As strong as the world in her prime. 
Here exploit, wealth, honor and vision. 

The man all men hunger to be, 
In thousands march singing derision 

On all but the man strong and free. 

New York crowns the world a^nd her stations, etc. 

The world in its passions and glories 

Is rising in splendor divine. 
The spirit of Life with her stories 

Is writing a sun-glowing line. 
Though greater and sweeping the courses 

The world and the nations shall live, 
To the form and the fire and the forces 
My city its measures will give. 

New York crowns the world and her stations. 

Her name doth my passions uncork. 
Of all the great cities and nations. 
Forever, forever New York! 

A WASHINGTON CITY SONG. 

Oh Washington, city of splendor. 

Enthroned on the height of a sphere! 
The world and the nations all tender 
Their honor, allegiance and fear. 
A queen of a glorious nation. 

The mother of states and of men. 
Eclipsed is the pomp of high station 
And all our ripe passions unpen. 

A thousand great cities surround thee; 

They guard and together they call: 
"Oh Washington, Queen we have crowned thee. 
The Queen of the earth and us all!" 

Thy domes and thy arches are golden 
And flashes thy structures and piles; 

46 



A city we mortals beholden 

When morning bursts on us with smiles. 
From coast unto coast all behold Ihee, 

Great songs from the nation untwine, 
What loyal allegiance doth fold thee, 

Oh city of splendor divine? 

A thousand great cities surround thee, etc. 

Thy men are like breeds of immortals, 

Thy senate and congressmen great 
Stand tall in thy wide arching portals 

Like pillars supporting the state. 
Thy presidents mantled with glory 

Eclipse the old world and her kings. 
They live like the heroes of story 

And each his high spirit out-flings. 

A thousand great cities surround thee, etc. 

And T am thy child. Oh my mother, 

A royal born heir of the race! 
Thy passions upon me uncover 

And smile in the light on thy face. 
Applause shall be louder than thunder; 

My service be faithful and strong; 
My allegiance no changes shall sunder; 
But grow like the life of a song. 

A thousand great cities surround thee; 

They guard and together they call: 
"Oh Washington, Queen we have crowned thee, 
The Queen of the earth and us all!" 

A CINCINNATI CITY SONG. 

Cincinnati! Cincinnati! 

'Tis magic but to mention 
My city's name, and passion ripe 
Doth wind me up with tension. 
My Spirit rises to the sound 

As man when war is ringing; 
At times there is a mighty bound, 
A new man forward springing. 
Old Cincinnatus was a man 

All men delight to see. 
Above the city sketch the plan 
That all his sons should be. 
We'll lift our ken. We'll be the men 
And face the foe as he did then. 

47 



Contented in high peaceful ways 

lu industry we labor; 
Fill, fill the years with golden days 

And friendships with each neighbor. 
Be past, be past, forever past 

The old ways of the fighter! 
But if we must we'll rise up fast 

And grasp the sword still tighter. 

Old Cincinnatus was a man, etc. 

Above our heads the towering hills, 

Around our feet the river, 
Old nature like a fountain fills 

And fills us like a giver. 
We're conscious of the powers of life. 

Reign and direct our forces. 
We battle in the world of strife 

For higher future courses. 

Old Cincinnatus was a man, etc. 



Cincinnati! Cincinnati! 

My city, home and glory! 
Thy life in me is flowing free 

And feeding deed and story. 
As Rome the hero often saw 

With rising fire and passion, 
Thou art my law and doth me draw. 
Feed, fire and noble fashion. 

Old Cincinnatus was a man 

All men delight to see. 
Above the city sketch the plan 
That all his sons should be. 
We'll lift our ken. We'll be the men, 
And face the foe as he did then. 



A CHICAGO CTTY SONG. 

Oh City, the heart of the nation! 

Full, bounding and bursting with life! 
Old nature, the globe and creation 

In thee pump their measures m.ost rife. 
Both crimson and white is the passion 

That circles and rushes and springs. 
With mountain-like freedom and fashion 

Each son and each daughter novv'- sings: 

48 



Chicago, the heart of the nation! 

Chicago within me doth flow! 
Oh Spirit of life and elation, 

Flow through me and feed me with "Go!" 

Strong, windy and rushing and glowing 

Thy pulses are beating like fire. 
The masses so surging and flowing 

Are drinking the morning's inspire. 
As high as the skies thou art standing; 

As strong as the earth is thy feet; 
Thy voice and thy arm are commanding; 

"All forward, all forward, repeat!" 

Chicago, the heart of the nation! etc. 

Thy sons are like giants of morning; 

Thy daughters like queens of the throne; 
Thy children with heaven's adorning. 

Not heaven itself dare disown. 
Through the length and breadth of our borders 

Or round the vast globe as we go. 
The form, features, pride and high orders 

The Mother within us doth show. 

Chicago, the heart of the nation! etc. 

Sublime are the future's bright courses; 

The world is created anew; 
But the form and the fire and the forces 

The mother first gives to her true. 
All hail to the heart and its passions! 

Hail, hail to the ages! we throw. 
Chicago her children high fashions. 

High fashions and feeds them with "Go!" 
Chicago, the heart of the nation! 
Chicago within me doth flow! 
Oh Spirit of life and elation. 

Flow through me and feed me with "Go!" 

THE BLACKSMITH'S SONG. 

All hail to the fire and the bellows strong^ 

To the anvil-face and -horn. 
The bull-hide apron, tub, hammer and tongs 

And the forgings to be born! 
Give, give ine the iron! Give, give me the plan! 

Stand back and out of my way! 
For this hand has fed and old nature bred 

The strength and the skill of day. 

49 



strike the anvil! Give it a ring! 

Life loves the oldest lyre. 
Around the world the echoes fling 

Of man and glowing fire. 
As I the mass to heating bring 

Life heat and shape me higher! 



In India old and in Greece and Rome, 

All down through the ages past, 
And in every land o'er the seas that foam 

I have forged and welded fast. 
With developing time I have stepped in rhyme 

And forged as the thinker planned; 
Built another fire and enlarged my tire 
Like an all-round first-class hand. 
I face all men, a first line man; 

Both born and bred on fire. 
Black as the coal, fresh as the fan. 

An element, strength, desire. 
As I the mass forge to the plan 
Life beat and shape me higher! 

Wagon, horse and plow and all I have dressed 

For the agricultural man. 
The armor and arms and the swords I blest 

For the rare old soldier clan. 
I have forged the bones for the vast machines 

These moderns bring to birth. 
With the strength of storm I have hammered form 
Round the old back-bone of earth. 
Let me live at a welding heat! 

Heap up the blast and fire! 
The passions white from head to feet, 

Feed, thrill me and inspire! 
As strength and skill their fullness beat 
Life strike and shape me higher! 



I have seen all trades, all the crafts and arts. 

But would choose again my own. 
I have gathered life undreamed by the marts 

From life in the forgings thrown. 
I am straight and strong and can sing the sonj 

That old Tubal Cain begun. 
My old hammer rings and the anvil sings 

For my best I've always done. 

50 



Lift the hammer! Give her a ring! 

Life loves the oldest lyre. 
Oh beat it out! The echoes sing; 

It feeds me like inspire. 
As down the mass I finished fling 

Life shapes me high and higher, 

THE ELECTRICIAN'S SONG. 

Science came. She gave the order: 

**0h create another clan! 
Earth renew from base to border! 

Bring a new and conquering man!" 
Brainy, muscled, motored, breasted. 

Bearing blue prints of her plan. 
Came a son of Science crested 
With a promise Life did scan. 

Electricians, great magicians, 

Magic with mysterious powers! 
Poets, painters and musicians 
Envy us our high endowers. 
Vital, flowing, passioned, glowing. 
Light dispensing, power bestowing. 
On Life's front rank we are going. 

"We have tapped old nature's sources, 

Brought above earth's central fires; 
Harnessed fierce, rebellious forces. 

Chained them down to flow in wires. 
Nature's reservoirs are breaking; 

Man has need and vast desires; 
We have bridged the chasm, taking 

Light and power that life requires. 

Electricians, great magicians, etc. 

Night we make to blaze with splendor; 

Day is fed with huge delight, 
Ancient secrets wealth surrender, 

Man and beast are armed with might. 
Wire and wireless new creations 

We are bringing to man's sight. 
Life is throned Queen of the nations 

In electric robes of light. 

Electricians, great magicians, etc. 

Batteries, switches, currents, voltage. 

And a world of tangled wires. 
Light and power like heaven's boltage, 

51 



strong or soft as need requires. 
Time's old forms are new created, 

Eartli is drunk with high inspires, 
Life with her ideal is mated, 

Man is fed electric fires. 

Electricians, great magicians, etc. 

We have hopes and dreams diviner 

For old earth and time and man. 
Science, our high chief designer, 
Strikes each day a bolder plan. 
Yonder shines the future's portal. 

It invites a better clan. 
Electric science, wise, immortal. 
Still the world will onward van. 
Electricians, great magicians. 

Magic with mysterious powers! 
Poets, painters and musicians 
Envy us our high endowers. 
Vital, flowing, passioned, glowing, 
Light dispensing, power bestowing, 
On Life's front rank we are going. 

THE LABORER'S SONG. 

By all the gods that man has guessed. 

His curse endowered devils, 
Angels and men and heaven blest, 

All hell in insane revels; 
Was ever such a life for man 

Created or intended? 
It found its place within the plan 
When fierce asunder rendered. 

Gods, angels, men, Oh who could dwell 

In such a lot and kin it? 
The worst, wild devil of all hell 
Would bear it just a minute. 
What judgment from high heaven fell 
To doom and damn me in it? 

The mud and scum and dross of life, 

I'm but a beast of burden. 
The heavy world and all its strife 

Upon my back is girden. 
My granite strength is quickly broke. 

My spirit bleeding, bleeding; 
Life binds me with a raw-toothed yoke 

52 



And on my life is feeding. 

Gods, angels, men. Oh who could dwell, etc. 

For just a rag and crust of bread 

I pay the morning's passion. 
I'm double bowed and hang my head ■ 

As out of human fashion. 
I'm twisted, battered, warped and torn. 

Cold, hungry, naked, hated; 
The burdened base, the butt of scorn, 

By life and death both baited. 

Gods, angels, men. Oh who could dwell, etc. 

In ditches, gutter, sewer and slime. 

In every place of danger, 
I'm driven like a Cain of crime 

And kicked as like a stranger. 
When pushed before the accident 

With fearful, fearful mangle. 
Life's millionaires loan not a cent, 

But wife and children strangle. 

Gods, angels, men. Oh who could dwell, etc, 

I'm one of the incompetents 

Where failure sets her seal; 
But 'tween me and success immense 

Was just an honest deal. 
What wonder in the killing strife 

Of life in insane revels 
We hear wild screams as from a fife 
Like blasphemy of devils? 

Gods, angels, men, Oh who could dwell 

In such a lot and kin it? 
The worst wild devil of all hell 
Would bear it just a minute. 
WTiat judgment from high heaven fell 
To doom and damn me in it? 

THE AVIATOR'S SONG. 

The spirit of men through the ages dreamed 

To mount up the azure skies, 
But was chained and sighed as the heavens seemed 

To invite him to arise. 
When at length I came a machine I wrought, 

A crude and a clumsy frame; 
But I mounted up and the way was taught, 

And ambition fed with flame. 

53 



Man was made for mounting, flying; 

Life was made for daring, trying; 
Strength and hope and dream are crying; 

"Cease, oh cease, oh cease your sighing! 
We are flying, flying, flying 

In the azure rich supplying 

Life and rapture worth thy buying." 

I mount to the sky and on mighty wings 

Scorn the bondage-chains of earth. 
On the heightless heights with celestial things 

Find another man has birth. 
Like a cloud of fire in the golden light 

I sail in my frail machine, 
Drinking deep delight and the vital might 
That the spirit sharpens keen. 

I am mounting up and winging, 
Life is ever upward springing. 
To my brothers earthward clinging 

Inspirations I am flinging. 
Mount, Oh mount! The dangers stinging 
Are the culture for the bringing 
Man unto his crown and kinging. 

I can circle round and in spirals rise, 

I can dive, remount and pause, 
But abhor all tricks for the bulging eyes, 

And obey great nature's laws. 
The spirit of life far above the strife, 

O'er rivers and vales and plains, 
'Bove the mountain peaks as a pilot seeks 
New paths in the new domains. 
I've but lately started flying, 

Just beginning, merely trying, 
Finding, testing out and buying 

Nature's secrets from all eyeing. 
They are coming. Life is crying: 
"Let us mount! I'm nearly dying 
For real flying, flying, flying." 

I dream of the day when my fair machine 

Shall be wings instead of sails, 
And bound on my frame like the magic things 

Of the rich, enchanting tales. 
But to sails or wings how my passion springs 

To mount to the summits high! 
From earth to the stars past the solar bars 

I can feel my spirits fly. 

54 



I am soaring, circling, winging; 

Life is balanced, poised and swinging. 
Other sailors pass me singing, 

Each on each new dreams are flinging. 
I my course am just beginning; 

Science, power and skill is bringing 

For my soaring, circling, swinging. 

WOMAN'S CIVIC SONG. 

Nature's rich, eternal passion 
Ever new creates the earth; 
She is rising with a fashion 

That she never dreamed at birth. 
Life is more and more immortal; 

Great ideals on us be. 
From the morning's golden portal 
A new message flyeth free: 

Give the woman life's best honor, 

Just with man to equal stand. 
Is man's load of life upon her? 
Give the franchise to her hand. 

'Tis the message of the morning. 

Nature's ripest passion cries 
Through her science, gifts, adorning, 

For the woman best to rise. 
Let all liberty unfold her! 

Why should man deny her right? 
AVhy should state and law so hold her 

When they blot her from their sight? 
Give the woman life's best honor. 

Just with man to equal stand. 
Is man's load of life upon her? 
Give the franchise to her hand. 

She has mothered up the nations; 

Ever smothered down the curse; 
Men and deeds that crown the stations 

Are the rhymings of her verse. 
Can the nature change its glory 

If the right repeals the wrong? 
Usher in the larger story 
Of the woman's civic song! 

Give the woman life's best honor, 

Just with man to equal stand. 
Is man's load of life upon her? 
Give the franchise to her hand. 

55 



Life on her triumphant marches 

Cannot with unequals go; 
Those high pillared golden arches 

Welcome but to equals throw. 
Man himself himself unknightens 
When denying woman's right; 
Man and woman blessing brightens 
When the law lifts off the blight. 

Give the woman life's best honor, 

Just with man to equal stand. 
Is man's load of life upon her? 
Give the franchise to her hand. 

VOTE AND NO-VOTE. 

Some twenty million years ago 

The god of evolution 
The elements of life threw in 

For gradual resolution. 
Eonic ages circled round 

With biologic tales, 
Now these eternal feminines 

And more eternal males. 

Then Life arose with interest keen 

And looked upon the world; 
A cosm.os in the chaos built. 

But tempest stormed and hurled. 
She now and then the final truth 

With strokes of golden light 
Upon the barren walls of time 

Did thus in splendor write: 

"Man is the mold, the fashioned form, 

The god-like incarnation 
Of all the elemental powers 

And movements of creation. 
The passions of pulsating earth 

Of planet and of sun, 
Into him flow and feed him full 

And round his being run." 

"The currents of the ages past, 

Like mighty tides that rise, 
Are gathered up and foeussed here 

And swelling out in size. 

56 



The infinite momentums and 

The solor cosmic sweep 
Of this vast universe of power 

Into his being leap." 

"He's loaded up with passion; 

He overflows with power; 
He's engined with all energies; 

He's bulwarked like a tower; 
He is driven with electrical 

Infinities of life; 
More a chaos than a cosmos. 

In elemental strife." 

"The first and last and surest mark 

Of man is vital force; 
L^n-broken, -bridled, savage, fierce. 

It wrecks him on his course. 
So strong are his rough elements 

He does not know his power. 
But blinded by his blinded strength 

He doth himself devour." 

"All, all along the mighty course 

The evolution keeps 
Are battle fields and broken swords 

And skeletons in heaps. 
Old earth renews his giant strength 

And armors him with life 
Till he almost seems demented 

Or created for the strife." 

"I love the great and on the man 

My eyes would often feast 
Although I often spit on him 

As but a glorious beast. 
As selfish as the very brute 

And sensual to the core 
He never dreamed unselfishness 

And love he trampled o'er." 

"So when the moral elements 

Within him came to birth 
I felt a sudden thrill of joy 

That never leaped from earth. 
I held my breath and focussed sight 

And searched the cause profound. 
And then the other half of man. 

The woman first I found." 

57 



"The day man finds a man he finds 

A larger, nobler self; 
The day that finds a woman 

Finds a solid globe of wealth; 
The only wealth that man doth need, 

The wealth that makes him great 
That thrones him on a manhood throne 

And kings him with estate." 

"Deep in the fairer, finer form. 

On which his strength did prey 
The higher germs of life had birth 

And sprang forth to the day. 
Out of the mother's passioned pains 

The sacrifices came 
That struck the mighty, selfish brute 

And brought him forth to shame." 

"Out of her rich maternal heart 

His poor paternal grew; 
She bound the family, then the tribe. 

And he the virtues drew. 
Great nature's passion grew and burst 

Into the flower of life. 
And man the beauty saw and smiled 

And rose above the strife." 

"The sacrifice intensifies 

The function and the power; 
The higher virtues blossomed forth 

Out of the mother's dower; 
The purer moral germs of life, 

Law, justice, truth and right. 
Were offspring of the mother's heart 

Though man did lend them might." 

"She mothered forth the first ideals. 

She nursed them from the beast; 
She is the life that gave the life 

To poet, prophet, priest. 
Before, behind, or close beside 

To every man that's great 
Some woman in the shadow stands 

And lends him his estate." 

"In her divine and higher sense 
Religions have their force 

58 



And draw their latest breath of life 
From whence they drew their source. 

Music, romance and poetry 
With high immortal pine 

P'ind closest kindred in her heart 
And grow toward the divine." 

"But weigh them as you weigh the beasts, 

The flesh against the flesh, 
Down, down he goes, the heavyweight 

With pride and strength afresh. 
But weigh them as you spirits weigh, 

The soul against the soul. 
It is the fine gold to the dross. 

An angel to a mole." 

"Although man crowns the latest age 

He's tall and straight and clean, 
High guided to his destiny 

By polar souls unseen. 
The home and wife and daughters fair 

Doth send him forth each morn. 
And by these higher souls of life 

He new each day is born." 

"Yet something of the brute he was 

Unto and round him clings; 
The primal selfishness of strife 

Still upward in him springs. 
Shes recognized, he gives his best; 

But nail it up and note; 
To every brute and fool the right. 

But woman should not vote." 

"Soon my indignant wrath now fierce 

Will take him by the throat, 
Against the wall, into him teeth 

Shall teach him who should vote. 
His selfish strength has been a curse. 

Her love has been a hope, 
And though he crowns the world 'tis she 

Who leads him up the slope." 

THE SONG OF THE SOCIALIST. 

Oh World and Time and Life — Spirits of Birth 
And Growth and Death — ye Seasons and Successions — 
Man, Thought and Dream — State, Church and Law and Worth- 

59 



All ye that hold the globe as your possessions — 
Black Night enthroned upon the old oppressions- 
Selfishness and Strife — Satiety and Blight — 
Crime, Poverty, Diseases and Transgressions — 
All fearful forms and ministers of night; 
And thou, great Labor, still groaning for redressions, 
A world-sustaining Atlas in thy might, 
Now listen to the song one of thy sons recite. 

Behold the world! The history of mankind 
The history is of this revolving globe. 
Would'st thou arise unto thy largest mind. 
Rend thou the mummy's musty winding robe, 
With science wise the spirit pierce and probe 
And then thyself. The mighty generations 
Of great biologies in every lobe 

Of the young earth long teemed with their creations. 
Time and again she travailed and did re-robe 
In fairer forms and higher dominations, 
Blind creeping up the steep but crownless in her stations. 

At length our shape, a fierce and savage beast, 
But in his breast the parent's saving grace; 
He battled for the offspring to him leased 
And in some incandescent hour intense 
The powers of thought sprang up to his defense. 
Contagious fire lighted the lightless brain, 
And from his eyes looked high intelligence. 
Language was born; on the immortal strain 
Slow grew the forms of man's omnipotence. 
After long ages, great struggles and sharp pain 
The man stood forth in view and prophesied to reign. 

Slow, slow, slow, the progress of the eons! 
The present hour is mortgaged to the past. 
Foreclosure oft was when the mighty paeons 
Would trumpet hope unto the flying blast. 
Slow, slow, slow, was great Reason's magic cast 
Upon the wild and warring tribes of men. 
The social institutions grew fixed and fast 
As law and right grew out of fog and fen. 
The state and church with nations round them massed. 
And poets with their chisel, brush and pen 
Virtue and splendor raised on man's astonished ken. 

After a hundred thousand years of man 
He has climbed up the summit of the sphere. 

60 



Now science with a vaster sweeping plan 
Rebuilds the world, maps out a new career, 
Points and impels to conquest each compeer 
Of life and time. Man answers the inspire. 
Visions arise. He conquers mount and mere 
And still leaps forth ambitious with desire. 
Another age strikes both the eye and ear. 
Man mounts on high; he scatters life and fire 
And with his science strikes the world as like a lyre. 

When on the hour we lift the past extreme 
We render forth great rivers of glad song; 
But in the strain discordant echoes teem 
For life and time are yet instinct with wrong. 
Achievement stands upon the mountains strong. 
Gathers the light, spreads sunshine on the plain. 
Flings far the airs that to great deeds belong, 
While far below earth is in travailing pain. 
The unthought, unsought, untaught, mighty throng 
Awake and hear the social prophet's strain. 
Is caught up in the trance and follow in his train. 

And is it strange? This dragon whelping den 
Where man and beast huddled in cave and lair 
Today delights the first arch-angel's ken. 
And heaven's transcendental splendors doth wear 
As like a robe, and man's ambitions dare 
To sail the azure skies. Cities with hosts 
Of steel girt piles and granite structures fair 
Adorn the mountains, the rivers, plains and coasts; 
Ships, railroads, towers, tunnels and bridges rare. 
As colleges and temples are our boasts. 
And genius sends afar her trumpet pealing posts. 

Earth's loaded down, she staggers with possession, 
Groaning to bear the burdened weight of gold. 
Her treasures held and heaped by long succession, 
Surprise the dreams that selfishness behold. 
Science and her experiments have told 
The secrets that have multiplied all wealth. 
Hundreds, thousands, sometimes a million fold. 
Nature, so like a prodigal in health. 
Doth open wide the treasures stored from old. 
Earth teems with stores; she's loaded down with pelf; 
So wealthy now is life she scarce can find herself. 

This world of wealth is selfish to the core; 
Its only end increase in gold and power; 

61 



With hunger infinite it cries for more 
And gloating eyes and hands stretch from her tower. 
The splendor and achievment of the hour 
Seems inconceivable allied to greed 
That on the race can turn and fierce devour. 
But history scan; humanity doth bleed; 
The few are strong; the middlings weakly cower; 
The masses vast forever suffer need 
And from their daily want wealth wealth herself doth feed, 

Nature and her resource and forces vast 
Are claimed by those who dare appropriate. 
Yes, man and his mechanic genius vast 
Are chattels mere to one small, high estate. 
The myriad multitudes that emulate 
Our numbers are plundered and robbed of rights 
Common to all humanity. Debate 
The case; nature's supplies, these kindred sprites, 
All dispossessed by few, the strong and great 
Exploiting common heritage, the heights 
Beating the masses down in endless, endless fights. 

The strife of greed has beaten down mankind 
As strong and rich beat down the poor and meek; 
But the evolutions now and then unbind 
Great souls and powers who strong befriend the weak. 
These modern days with life's piercing critique 
Have fed the masses reason, strength and ire. 
He rises up. Why should he cringe and creek? 
He views the world. The visions in him sire 
The passions fierce that soon or late will speak. 
He's born. He's fed. He's growing with desire. 
Another creed and deed are shaping in the fire. 



The high philosophies of social life 
Are being born and fed within that mass. 
The whence, the wherefore and whither of this strife 
Great suffering is teaching to her class. 
Into those minds life's great conceptions pass 
That kindle with contagious life and fire 
The sacred dreams millennial ages glass. 
He sees, he thinks, he feels all things require 
Some social change to break the iron and brass 
Upon humanity. The prophet's lyre 
Unto him sings the songs of the world's long, long desire. 

62 



He hears great songs, and bursting through the discords 
Of society, and making them still worse, 
He feels the mighty measures that the lords 
Of life and love as prophecy unpurse 
From their high summits of the universe. 
Across the blackened, blighted, blasted earth 
The visions sail that doth forever nurse 
The immortal to answer to its worth. 
Great songs of life on this chaotic curse. 
Dreams, truths and words of sacred, solemn mirth, 
Fill eye and ear till hope comes to diviner birth. 

"Right! Social Right! Justice and social Right!" 
The prophets shout around the modern earth. 
Their trumpets with omnipotential might 
New passion wakes like a predestined birth. 
"Right! Social Right!" Right whose transcendent worth 
Restrains, impels and binds all to obey; 
That has within its soul the depth and dearth 
Around life's base; that multitudes can sway 
And shake the globe unto its farthest girth. 
Right, social right, and dawn of another day 
Is bursting on the earth that staggers en her way. 

"Right! Social Right!" The earth-awaking sound 
Breaks in loud peals o'er city, plain and tower. 
The vast reverberations now have found 
Great echoes from the man all things devour. 
"Right! Social Right!" The high creating hour 
Renews the world and finds another right 
Omnipotent in high appealing power. 
Dynamical with deep inherent might. 
'Tis a vital sound. The very words endower 
The mass with life and draws them 1o the height 
Of that ripe consciousness where all men firm unite. 

"Right! Social Right!" A rolling, mighty blast 
With earthquake and volcanic thunder sound 
Circles the globe; the systems stand aghast 
With fear and fearful premonitions bound. 
Oh trumpet out, around and round and round: 
"There must be change, repression and revision 
Beforo the man these modern days have found. 
There must be change, progress and re-division 
Unto the mass forever ground and ground. 
There must be change. The fates decree decision. 
Woe, woe unto the powers that treat it with derision!" 

63 



Shall this organic, universal man, 
Emancipated, and in his manhood's dress, 
Shall he the world build to the larger plan. 
Then suffer hunger, chains, prison, bitterness. 
That just a few fond fortune may caress? 
•'No! No!" Heaven and earth are shouting "No!" 
With passion, emphasis, burden and impress, 
As they behold him kindled, fierce, aglow. 
Be wise! Reform! Consider man! Progress! 
Time's rebellions and revolutions show 
The commons can the crowns down from the summits throw. 

Shall this old democrat that did dethrone 
The kings and nobles of the ancient world. 
Shall he unshorn, as a Colussus grov^^n. 
His independence and freedom flag unfurled, 
At any feet, system or power be curled? 
By all the gods! Hell's "damn" or heaven's "bless!" 
The earth ere he shall out of place be hurled. 
Be wise! Reform! Consider man! Progress! 
The system is and ought to be imperilled! 
The masses vast it slaves in hopelessness 
And they will soon or late it shatter to excess. 

Behold the world! See multitudinous man 
As raillioned as the sands beside the sea; 
He cometh forth; he doth the whole world scan; 
The air alone without a price is free. 
And even this were fenced if it could be. 
Life is for sale, and the ever rising price 
Scarcely can pay inherited poverty. 
Is it strange the outcasts from paradise 
Stand at the gates? Far stranger not to see 
Life's lots are cast by some loaded device 
That makes a few the priests, millions the sacrifice. 

We rise as hordes out of prolific earth . 
The race fertility never, never fails. 
We are the crop that always comes to birth 
Whatever blight or barrenness assails. 
We are ashamed and often grief prevails. 
So numberless, unwelcomed by the times 
And weighted down as poverty entails. 
But hero we are; great numbers are not crimes. 
Before, behind are dark and figured veils. 
And round the strife and toil that grinds and grimes; 
And loud, Oh loud we hear the old ancestral rhymes! 

64 



We come to life and early in our teens. 
And hosts before, are into slavery sold. 
The child's first right, home, school and nature's greens, 
And being's hope unto the god of gold 
Is given up for v^hat his mouth can hold.. 
We're sold, we're slaved, harnessed and fetter-bound. 
And spirit-broke unto the customs old. 
Just like the beasts we're driven round and round 
For crust and clothes, eft hungry, naked, cold. 
"Toil, toil Oh brute! Toil on machine-like hound! 
Toil on, Oh thoughtless beast!" is all that we have found. 

An ever growing army of wage slaves 
Every morning we are marched unto the mills. 
The vast machine forever . grinds and raves 
And in its hunger like a monster kills. 
The plumbed-up strength so like the iron hills — 
Courage and front that dares the lightning freed — 
Wine-like passion that being thrills and thrills — 
Joys, hopes and dreams and youth's exalted creed — 
Beauty's beloved — Life's sons upon her sills — 
We're fuel, we're fuel, just fuel to feed the greed 
That but destroys itself as on us it doth feed! 

There seems a scientific and infernal 
Ingenuity in force to torture gain 
Out of humanity, and our diurnal 
Course is high-pressured, tensioned, on the strain, 
Driven and horsed by scorpion whips of pain. 
Like ore we're fed into the furnace white; 
Their hoppers deep we fill them as with grain: 
Hydraulic presses catch us in their might, 
And squeezed and squeezed the wine of life we rain." 
The clotted, gloated, ghastly things to sight 
The more their maw is fed more craves their appetite. 

And thou. Oh Panic! Thou nightmare dream 
Of labor! Thou merciless, incarnated scourge 
From whom we fly with terror! Thou form 
Of hungry haggardness whose passions urge 
Thee through the mass with midnight's stormy surge! 
Thou human, driven to insanity, 
Demon-ridden, rasping the gathering dirge 
Of man to man's inhuman inhumanity! 
Oh tortured, twisted shape where must converge ' 
Deformity, destruction and profanity, 
Birth of destroying strife, blindness and man's inanity! 

65 



Thou birth of greed, abortion of the strife, 
Great modern goddess, a fearful retribution 
Upon this blind and wide divided life 
That cannot find in union its solution! 
Position, power, privilege and execution 
See thee and feast upon their bulwarked thrones; 
And we, we the beasts that wrought this rich profusion, 
Our throats are dry, dry with our groans and groans. 
Our famished frames are racked by destitution. 
Our wives and children more torture us with moans; 
The world loaded with wealth and not one loaf she loans. 

Shall thus toil on the world sustaining masses? 
Shall they be caught within the mighty crash. 
Be fixed and chained within these narrow passes 
Where mountain powers upon each other dash? 
Shall they thus die under great hunger's lash? 
Asunder torn upon the fierce machine? 
Wander around, bleeding from many a gash? 
Tattered and pinched, famished and pale and lean? 
Shall he on his own spirit gnash and gnash 
As being tortured by a fiend unseen, 
Fall down upon the day, be shovelled out unclean? 

Shall he thus live, suffer and final die, 
And all the world be loaded down with wealth? 
Shall he behold this history in his eye 
And all the spoil for which he gave his health 
Held by a few tyrannic lords of pelf? 
By all the gods of heaven, earth and hell, 
By blessing or damnation on himself. 
There must be change! Some system man must spell 
Of restitution from this unrighteous stealth. 
Earth's mighty passions heat, a subterranean knell. 
And fragmentary worlds in strangest orbits dwell. 

As labor grows more wise and discontented 
So wealth grows richer, more powerful and profane. 
The mass and rights are insolent resented 
And even now some for resistance slain. 
It seems infernal powers upon them reign 
So that the class unto their curse is given. 
Money-mad, most money-mad possessed, this train 
They drive to death and far more they are driven. 
The genius of that hammer beating brain 
Is that the world unto its gold riven. 
The masses vast of life for piles of wealth be shriven. 

66 



We see around us closing every day 
The iron nets monopoly doth cast; 
We laugh and sing and dance upon our way 
While feet and hands and neck are fettered fast. 
Beneath and round, before and from the past 
The shackles sure are growing on us tight. 
Here pulled, there pushed, now thrust, then urged, thou hast 
Been oft held up and robbed, and from the height 
Been beaten down. The under currents vast 
Bear far away man's individual right. 
We're up against the ''trusts" and must lie down or fight. 

The "interests" by their natures must combine. 
For nature old is mapping out the course; 
Her prophecies and blue-prints of design 
Are in their hands and drives them on with force, 
A vast momentum from the primal source. 
Great science and her wisest impartations. 
Experiments experience doth endorse, 
Efficiency of large administrations, 
Im.mensc production with its divorce 
Of loss and waste and killing isolations. 
Map, make and force the laws of growing combinations. 

Behold them now! Like Olympic gods divine 
They sit and rule, mark, crush, absorb, unite, 
And all the world is coming into line; 
Cities, states and nations are in plight. 
Bound round and round by their strong armed might. 
"Interests consolidate" they nod, and more 
Competitors shake hands and cease to fight. 
The very world from circumference to core 
Is in their spreading, spider fingers tight. 
The "trusts" hold earth, men, means and life in store; 
The masses only left, strength, thought and suffering lore. 

Combination is yet but partial grown 
But see her there, right up against the state, 
Aggressive as a tyrant on his throne. 
And gathering strength as we cringe and debate. 
Tall, defiant, resourceful, patient, great, 
Almost a match for nations in her powers, 
She's bound to grow, for the very times create 
Necessity, gives life and high endowers. 
The "trusts" will more and more consolidate; 
Small enterprise must die as doth the hours; 
Financial socialism swift saves or fierce devours. 

67 



Life's high philosophies the "trust" confirms; 
New social creeds it doth elucidate. 
Their policies are wisest wisdom's terms 
To man, nature's hint to incorporate 
The narrower good into the wider state. 
When socialists of wealth unite their powers 
How could men fail the doctrine to create 
And their own slogan hurl at the golden towers? 
"Unite all men! All men participate!" 
Should be our counter-song unto the hours. 
All men must meet the sphinx, destroy or she devours. 

The world was made to nourish all mankind. 
If not for this, let man now make it law, 
And by the God within the heart and mind 
Far publish it with life's most solemn awe. 
'Tis blasphemy, thought's abortion, hell's raw 
And rank deformity to even dream 
The earth was made to feed the crying maw 
Of just a few. Let sun-like reason stream 
Upon the strife of fiercest tooth and claw! 
"Each for the all; all for the each" will seem 
A doctrine like a God above the worlds supreme. 

Oh where did life this selfishness first find? 
Are cannibals the standards of our law? 
Can savage codes and m.onsters fierce and blind 
Command the heart and intellectual awe? 
Should humanity not outgrow its maw, 
And Life, out of the philosophic mind 
And travailing years, her largest measures draw? 
Should not this scientific age rewind 
Life's armatures and refine dynamics raw? 
All transgressors whom selfishness makes blind 
Should Life's first truth be taught that man should serve his kind. 

Should not the all be owners of the earth? 
Should not the stores within her bosom blest 
Sustain the all with shelter, food and mirth? 
Nations should own and by her agents best 
Exploit the earth. They should become possessed 
Of giant "trusts" and her bureaus should trade 
Commodities on which the people rest; 
Shelter, clothes and coal, meat and drink be made 
A civic care, a burden and behest; 
The people own, administer, be paid. 
As goods and common good and wisest lore shall aid. 

68 



The greatest problem of the greatest age 
Is to convert this murderous, antithetic 
Competition with its insanest rage 
Into some noble scheme of life magnetic, 
Uniting all in sane and sympathetic 
Action. He is the blindest of the blind ■ 
Who cannot see this ever gives emetic 
To fiercest hell to spew on earth her kind. 
He is a crime to all the powers prophetic 
Who dares not think, who will not seek and find 
Another social scheme that all men's interest bind. 

It is socialism or suicide. 
Humanity is face to face with fate. 
No society of cannibals can bide; 
Consuming beasts themselves annihilate. 
Men must unite. Life must arise and mate 
The new ideal or else descend the deep. 
Devouring beasts she must now subjugate 
Or to the wolves become a herd of sheep. 
A body to the dream she muse create 
And on time's height a golden harvest reap 
Or plunge in bloody strife with dead in many a heap. 

It is socialism or suicide. 
Humanity is face to face with fate. 
The creed contagious spreading far and wide 
Changes the man who changes scon the state. 
The dream commands the dreamer to create 
For her the forms of corresponding sense 
And nerves him up to never hesitate 
Before the powers that arm for their defense. 
This competition, but let it go its gait; 
Look down the ages! Volcanic passions tense 
With blood and fire and death make battle fields immense. 

It is socialism or suicide. 
Hum.anity is face to face with fate. 
Behold how Labor and Capital collide! 
Are these the protests that formerly did wait 
Upon the lords that spurned them from the gate? 
Strikes now are Nature's great organic soul, 
Earth's elemental, outraged powers elate 
With hope shaking the globe from pole to pole. 
Cities groan, nations tremble, the world feels fate 
Upon it, and the prophets through earth roll* 
"Reorganize the state or destruction whelms the whole." 

69 



It is socialism or suicide. 
Humanity is face to face with fate. 
Disease and plague and death itself is tied, 
And mighty wars of ambition, greed and hate 
Are dying out as industry grows great. 
Earth's populations every year increase; 
Can Competition think to accommodate 
The millions vast of universal peace? 
And must we not reorganize the state 
And write out Life another nobler lease, 
To time's old selfishness a gradual certain cease? 

It is socialism or suicide. 
Humanity is face to face with fate. 
A spirit new doth destiny provide; 
Choose which ye will! The future now must mate 
An anarchic or high fraternal state. 
Shall Life lie down beneath these usurpations 
Or the expropriators expropriate? 
Shall we destroy these vast administrations 
Or make the state a new directorate? 
Shall high and low make new incorporations 
And mount life's highest plane with golden inspirations? 

It is socialism or suicide 
Humanity is face to face with fate. 
Choose thou thy death, with selfishness abide, 
Or will thy life; all men as brothers mate. 
'Tis up to us. Why should we more debate? 
Failure is stamped upon the old solutions. 
Some soul divine opens life's golden gate. 
Pass on, Oh Life! Millennial institutions 
Await thy coming. Oh never, never hate 
The noblest creeds. Old nature's evolutions 
For consummation needs the mind's best contributions. 

The evolution spirit is in pain; 
Democracy is coming from its throes 
And grooving strong with both defeat and gain. 
Democracy tO' its ancestral foes 
Delivers and delivers staggering blows. 
"Democracy in industry" it cries, 
"Away, away all diplomatic shows! 
Unite, unite all human blood and ties I 
Democracy in politics soon goes 
Unless industrial democracies arise. 
The issue square is set. Oh look it in the eyes!" 

70 



Should not the state, the multitudinous man, 
The gathered up and incarnated life 
Of this vast host now take a nobler plan, 
And like a granite figure in the strife 
Directing stand and make the changes rife 
With promises for all? Should not the state 
Lift in his hand a lightning flashing knife 
And swift dissolve the fetters of that fate 
That binds the masses? Should not the state re-wife, 
Divorcing the harlot "interests" as his mate, 
And with humanity climb up life's high estate? 

Cannot the state manage an enterprise? 
Is Uncle Sam a man of common scope? 
Shall capital and labor problems rise 
And he them shun when dared with them to cope? 
He has ever stood on life's ascensive slope 
And loves to front the giant tasks of men. 
A nation free, though on it blind doth grope 
And dares to fight the dragons in their den. 
That people is the people of his hope. 
For them he's like the type that poets pen, 
A man on whom the gods delight to fix their ken. 

Great Uncle Sam has never fallen down. 
He's on the spot. He challenges the task. 
Undertakings on which the ages frown 
And earth dares not are all that he doth ask. 
Give him the field; the "interests" full unmask, 
Or let them all him hamper as they will; 
Full suddenly he would himself uncasque 
To his bare strength and stand up to the mill. 
Could he not rearrange the social flask, 
The mould make up, new elements choose with skill. 
The glowing furnace dress, the liquid metal spill? 

And could he not great universities found 
For civil servants, and far eclipse the schools 
For fighting lore with which we now abound? 
Then offices fill with the man that rules 
Instead of now with "interest" serving tools. 
Inexperienced socialism doth require 
Leaders of power, and civil service stools 
Must send the men that office doth desire. 
Democracy, thy task is not for fools! 
But trust thyself. This mighty mass can sire 
The man and thought and deed that lift the nation higher 

71 



Aye, there's the rub! There is the point of pause! 
There is the vast interrogation mark! 
There's where we stand as solemn as great laws, 
By silence held and shadowed o'er with cark. 
There socialism stands up against it stark 
Objection. Does not humanity lack 
The character to bear the sacred ark 
That cannot ride on old corruption's back? 
Is not humanity so sunk in passions dark 
That she would break beneath that golden pack 
And final ruin block the doubtful future's track? 

That is the question. We are up against it there. 
Time's noblest issues are foundered on the rocks 
When tied up with, and for success doth bear 
On politics, for politics is pox 
Infected and diseases rank unbox 
On life. The last field to produce a man 
Is the first whose corruption him unfrocks. 
Can politics work out this social plan? 
Can politics whose crime forever shocks 
Mother this cause? Great character must van 
The world's divinest dream since life and time began. 

Oh socialism, socialism! Thou dream. 
Vision, and sun-like splendor of the years! 
Kingdom of heaven, whose glories blinding stream 
Upon our loss, grief, bitterness and tears! 
Thy greatest need are just those high compeers 
For Vv^hich we pine, for which we daily bleed, 
For lack of which we stagger blind with fears. 
Ideal divine some angel state has freed 
To wander through these black and blighted spheres, 
Bring thou thy men, thy doctrine will be deed. 
The world and men would cast themselves into thy creed. 

Thy greatest need is need of moral men; 
Not in the mass around thy sacred feet, 
Though there is need, but in the citizen 
That rides along the metropolitan street 
And in the capitolian senates seat. 
This emphasis of ages, Oh place it dear 
Upon thy heart! Re-write, impress, repf.at 
The truth to soul and teach it to the sphere. 
All cause and powers that nurse the finer wheat 
Of life do thou with gladness greet. Near, near 
The dream is to the deed when virtue doth appear! 

72 



Oh for the sake of this humanity — 
Hope, life and love and coming generations — 
For those high dreams that struggle with insanity. 
And God enthroned on his supremest stations, 
Give us some men — spirits and dominations — 
Force, virtue and intelligence — the stamp 
Of old eternity — the incarnations 
That makes men feel heroes of old doth tramp 
The earth once more — globe-balancing creations 
Before whose conquering countenance decamp 
The foes of life as night before the morning's lamp! 

Oh Life, Oh Life, why is this travailing pain 
With all great thoughts thou bringest into birth? 
Ideas rule and those that on us reign 
Have cost the souls that gave their being birth. 
All vital truths of ripe, transcendent worth 
Live by the price of thousands that are slain. 
Rear the ideal upon this blasted dearth 
And more it costs than doth a battle plain. 
Lift man an inch out of his selfish mirth 
And noble hosts must perish in their strains; 
Thus the world's path is marked by every step she gains. 

Ye mortal Powers! Old World and Time and Life! 
High congregations all ages call divine! 
All that behold and mingle in the strife 
And for man's good forever pray and pine! 
Mighty Spirit, supremest Soul benign. 
Great Author and Sustainer that we station 
With some great plan most glorious in design 
Above, behind, before and through creation! 
Guide, guide the globe! Oh feed her life and wine! 
Breathe virtue new! Regenerate the nation! 
And let thy prophets sing the wisest inspiration! 

Oh hark, Oh hark ! A silver clarion sound 
Climbs up and falls from yon sun-lighted height! 
Some spirit on that battlemented bound 
Is pouring song instinct with life and light. 
Oh hark, Oh hark! Though veiled to mortal sight 
The measure is contagious with inspire. 
And suddenly men energized with might 
Strain far the soul and harken with desire. 
Oh hark. Oh hark! Prophetic spirit bright. 
We listen now. Oh strike again thy lyre 
And let this social song die on thy words of fire! 

73 



"Be wise, be wise, ye throned and crowned transgressors 
Of position, power, wealth and intelligence! 
Ye have been man's insane and proud oppressors 
And ride upon his strength and ignorance. 
Be wise, be wise! Bridle thy high pretense. 
For man at last grows conscious of his might. 
His passions wake. Electric, wise, immense, 
Not long will he bear tyrants on his height. 
Be wise, be wise! Oh never him insense! 
Listen and learn! Let power yield unto right 
Or down like lightning bolts thou plungest through the night." 

"Ye anti-socialists are the worst enemies 
Of humanity. Life's noblest doctrine 
That men are brothers in birth and destinies 
And at the poles should be as close as kin 
Your reason and your conscience cannot win. 
Denying this, are ye not selfishness? 
And selfishness, the essence of all sin, 
Mothers all crimes and curses that oppress. 
Ye breed of Cain, branded without and in, 
Abel ye slay; your doctrines death possess; 
Ye murder the ideal and dreams that mankind bless." 

"Murder ye will, offspring and soul of Cain! 
Ye purple-throned and crimson-crowned transgressors 
Will slay the race before self shall be slain 
Or ye deprived of your unjust possessions. 
Ideals and dreams outlive thy blind oppressions 
And your high hired assassins of the times. 
Immortal they as their inspired confessions 
They are resurrected with the rising chimes 
Of heaven. Sacrifice nurses accessions 
To the cause of truth. On the persecutor climbs 
The judgmxcnt long delayed on life's worst loaded crimes." 

"Be wise, be wise, ye counsellors of state! 
Though chosen by the wide democracy 
Responsibility upon you is as great 
As kings and priests in a theocracy. 
Be wise, be wise! Man's aristocracy 
Has honored ye above all honored kings, 
And woulds't thou dare thyself with blind hypocrisy 
To mask beneath the golden robe that clings? 
Be wise, be wise! The old plutocracy, 
Corrupt as old, the same old barter brings. 
No man is bought or sold, no man corruption stings." 

74 



"Ye are the hopes on whom mankind depend; 
You're chosen for man's noblest destiny, 
To see, to think, to guide and to befriend 
The struggling mass to social liberty. 
Fore run the age. Read thou the prophecy 
Upon times walls where flaming splendor writes 
A message to the future and to thee. 
The living soul of modern life indites 
The oracle. It is insanity 

To long neglect or dare blaspheme the sights 
The Spirit of all life flashes on wrongs and rights." 

"Oh come, oh come, new social leaders great, 
Wise pilots strong upon this troubled sea 
To guide these sisters fair to populate 
New continents with new humanity! 
Ye unborn generations, hear the plea! 
New Washingtons and Lincolns bid arise 
TO' guide the state to nobler destiny. 
Society in travailing pain and sighs 
Is calling for the public men to be. 
Away, away the graft that sells and buys! 
Come, come. Oh social man, the office for thee cries!" 

"Be wise, be wise, ye prophets of the dawn! 
Fathom the heart of man and life and time; 
And let the veil from thy own soul be drawn 
And blinding self extracted as a crime. 
Be wise, be wise! The splendors most sublime 
Are blazing not upon the morning skies, 
But on the race when out of toil and grime 
To virtue, thought and freedom they arise. 
Be wise, be wise! The singer first must chime 
The dream of life from night and strife and lies. 
Then send it splendor robed unto the mass that sighs." 

"Oh never dream, ye socialistic sons, 
Great social change is ever sudden wrought! 
The world's passion with vast momentum runs 
And can be changed only as man is taught. 
Feed on the dream. Scatter life's noblest thought 
Upon the heart, the conscience and the mind. 
The socialist is often born and brought 
If thou art strong, truthful and wise and kind. 
Though far success and struggle with it fraught, 
The cause of man life's larger spirits find. 
Doth feed their giant strength and all together bind. 



"The passion that is fed from dreams divine, 
Out of the deep and from all things around, 
Is often like the drinker of new wine. 
Staggers and falls from manhood's highest ground. 
The test supreme of man is to be found 
Still self-possessed when strifes around him wind; 
When others are distracted by the sound 
He's master of himself and all his kind. 
Be wise, be wise! The prophet oft is bound 
By his own passion and driven mad and blind, 
A hissing to the cause and to the curse consigned." 

"Spirit that doth create the universe. 
That doth direct the course of constellations, 
That doth the worlds along their histories nurse. 
Guiding the course of all her congregations! 
Though dark obscured to man the destined stations. 
And sometimes he may threaten to blaspheme. 
Beholding oft great backward circulations. 
Oh guide the world! Mould out the glorious dream? 
The man disjoint from time's old degradations! 
And let humanity forever stream and stream 
As sunlight visions pass from heaven's gates agleam!" 



THE DOCTRINE OF DEVILS. 

'Tis the doctrine of devils. 

Of hell and her revels, 
Of tempest and storms and the blackness of night, 

Of demons insanest 

And blasphemies plainest 
The dreadest man dreams in the nightmare of fright, 

To give unto mortals 

The wide open portals 
To earth and her stores and the sources of wealth. 

And to leave unrestrained 

The dark, selfish profaned 
To seek each his own with the passions of self. 

Yet down the long ages 

Life's blood and black pages 
Have written the creed that has made of earth hell, 

The past full of dirges 

The present o'er surges 
And strangles the hopes that the future might sell. 

76 



Professor and preacher, 

The poet and speecher 
Upholster the creed that the ages have cursed. 

Wealth, honor and station 

Have poured their damnation 
Upon the high dreams that affliction has nursed. 

The doctrine unpurses 

Hell's life and her curses 
On man and his work and all dreams that have birth. 

Strife, anger and battle 

Make humans as cattle 
And war the life work of the nations of earth. 

Now five or six billions 

Make slaves of the millions 
And rob them of all but a curse and the grave. 

They bring on the panic 

With purpose tyrannic 
And starveth to death the already bound slave. 

Man, wife, son and daughter 

Are led to the slaughter 
Like beasts of the field or degraded more worse; 

Robbed, robbed of their passion, 

Unhumaned in fashion. 
Turned, turned in old age to cold, hunger and curse. 

Democracy rises. 

The system surprises. 
And writeth its doom in the socialist's dream. 

Ideals of the masses 

Have past the night passes 
And burst on the world as the morning doth stream. 

The doctrine of heaven 

God writes it with levin 
Upon the wise mind and the courses of time. 

"All men that earth mothers 

Shall live and be brothers, 
Inherit all things and her prophecies rhyme." 

Starve, starve him and strangle. 

Beat, beat him and mangle 
Who dead to Life's creed and her glorious plan, 

Shall curse as "infernal" 

The doctrine supernal. 
That men are created as servants to man. 

77 



A SOCIALISTTC NEED, 

This socialism needs 

A new and high ideal 
'Gainst grafters and their greeds 

And everlasting steal. 
As great socialism grows 

Place calls the honest man. 
He alone defeat's the foes, 

He alone the world can van. 

The emphasis here place. 

Oh sing it loud in song! 
Oh teach it to the race 

And breed it in the throng! 
Fix, fix it in the brain; 

Plant, plant it in the heart 
To rise and rule and reigu 

In state and man and mart! 

The socialist that sells 

His office and his power, 
Hurl, hurl him to the hells 

Of devils that devour! 
The socialist that guards 

The people and their rights. 
Throne, throne him with the bards 

And heroes of the fights! 

If Berger or if Debs 

Men worthy, honored, high, 
Turn traitor to the plebs 

And office sell or buy, 
Straight out before the crowd 

Their crimes before men spread. 
In the silence hushed and bowed. 

Fill, fill them full of lead. 

The greatest of all crimes 

Make betrayal of the state. 
The greatest of the times, 

The man the state can make. 
Let this socialism grow 

But let socialism seal 
To its falsest friend and foe 

The office and ideal. 

78 



THE PLATFORM 

The Spirit of Life in the Campus cried 

And I paused and strained my ear; 
"Now a platform build for the base of state 

And a new election year. 
Build of life and lore, honor, truth and song 

Of man and his being's right; 
Be it founded firm, built solid and strong 
For foes that forever fight. 

To the deep, to the deep with official greed! 

To the night with the friendly foes! 
Give the base, give the race, give the power and place 
To the platform great that grows 

From human need and the new life bestows." 

"1 desire a base for the whole of life, 

Where the globe itself may stand; 
Unmoved by the storms of the endless strife, 

Where heroic spirits band. 
May it lift the mass, make a better class, 

And the millions bind in one; 
It must bolt and brace and must lend us grace 

As the times their circles run. 

To the deep, to the deep with ofllcial greed, etc." 

"Hew the timbers strong from the mountain rocks, 

Saw the planking straight and rough; 
For the social wars and the earthquake shocks 

Give us nature's strongest stufC. 
Now the raw backbone of the old earth bare 

And on nature's heart and fires. 
Throw the planking down, and forever dare 

Be the ages' sons and sires. 

To the deep, to the deep with official greed, etc." 

*' 'Tis a wiser world and a larger man 

Than has ever lived before. 
See the vast decree that is written thee 

As the age's line of lore. 
Give a platform great for the base of state! 

Humanity wisdom feed! 
Else a hell-born hour will the state devour 

In its insane selfish greed. 

To the deep, to the deep with official greed, etc." 

I pushed through the mass and the scorning class • 

And said to the presence great: 
"There's a platform laid, of old granite made. 

79 



For a real and ideal state. 
Are socialists' schemes but vain dreamers' dreams 

Or plans from old Nature's heart? 
Oh Spirit of Life, thou dost mother strife 
To be ignorant as thou art! 

There's a platform laid, of old granite made, 

For a real and ideal state; 
But thy blinded breed in their blinded greed 
On falsehoods old will forever feed." 



THE SINGER AND DREAMER. 

The singer of songs and the dreamer of dreams. 
Is he really outgrown and vain as he seems? 
Romantic and young with his lyre on his breast; 
Sweet sweetness of sound, passion crimson with zest. 
Strange magic to thrall, rarest gifts to delight, 
More an innocent child than man in his might. 
Wealth, labor and greed and the masses of men 
Behold him and smile with a scorn in 'their ken. 

Oh dreamer of dreams and Oh singer of songs. 
Stand up in thy strength amid men and their wrongs! 
Thou art crownless and crowned; lawgiver and king; 
Foreseeing and molding the ages that wing; 
Strong, wise and upright; the creator of life; 
Giving man to himself in the conflict of strife; 
Then robing with splendor and pouring in fire 
That mounteth life's planes with the swiftest desire. 

The singer of songs and the dreamer of dreams. 
The spirit of life in him fountains and streams. 
His heart and his brain and his tongue and his lyre 
Are fed with the purest of nature's own fire. 
He has taught and has fed and this human up led 
From fossils and rocks where our fathers lie dead; 
An image in time from eternity great 
He prophesies man in his highest estate. 

This dreamer of dreams and this singer of songs. 
Far banish the clan from the myriad throngs! 
Bar sweetness and light, hope, rapture and lift, 
Morn, rainbow, flower, bird, fountain, azure, cloud, rift 
Leave science and sense, strength, labor and gain. 
Want, selfishness, strife and the fields of their slain. ' 
Take, take thee thy world! It is just at thy door, 
A world full of wealth, but diseased to the core. 

80 



Oh Spirit of Life, let thy treasures unfold 

In something far better than science and gold! 

Oh give us some singers who sing from the heart, 

Some dreamers who dream with old magical art, 

Some singers whose songs are a crimson delight, 

Some dreamers whose dreams live forever on sight. 

For a singer of songs and a dreamer of dreahis 

We could barter a state and the wealth that so. teems. 

"TO BE OR NOT TO BE." 

A spirit speaks to my spirit: "Has man 
Upon the heights of life no budding sense 
Of immortality? Does nature take 
Him captive? Does she blind and bandage him 
To circle round a little sphere of 'life ■ 
Just like the be.-^sts? Does she shear o'ff' his Jocks, 
Bind him in chains, cast in her dungeon keep. 
Use his giant strength to ceaseless grind th:e miilSy ' 
And at the last, a mere machine, returns 
Him to his earth? No! No! Man in his higher 
Passions and desires, in his summer glory 
And autumnal ripeness, in his rounded 
Sphere of being and the majesty that 
Wields it, does he not burst the boundaries 
Of time, and as his cradle prophecies 
Foretold both make himself and all mankind 
Immortal? He becomes the proud imperial , 
Subject, and not the object of the world. > g ^ r, , ^ 
He backs himself against this massive frame,. ;>./-':,' 
Against the l)eetling granite mountain ranges^. ;■ ^ 5- 
And out-measures, out-we:'ghSi out-worths it. all. 1 ^ <c 
He contends and overcomes the time-spirit, 
Creating thus the soul that reaches far 
Beyond, even to the cosmopolitan man. 
His character and exploits on him throw 
The suggestion, atmosphere and glory 
Of other globes and ages yet to be 
Inherited. He is the maker of the world — 
The master of nature — the fountain head 
Of nations — the promulgator of laws — ,, .. _, 

The founder of schools — the author of sciejice-—: . . . t a 
The parent of art — the father of religion— . 
And a worshiper of truth. He crowns supreme 
And so outsoai*s the world no power can him 
Return. His height and depth, his reach and sweep, 
His intensity and soaring aspiration 
Are more boundless than the universe itself 
And almost tempt belief in self-existence, 

81 



So vast are his resources. All heaven and earth 
Contemplate the greatness, which at its fulness 
Denies a creature of the briefest hour 
And affirms a spirit of transcendental 
Destiny. 

Does not the mechanic, scholar, soldier, 
Poet, patriot, hero, martyr, prophet, 
And every living type of human greatness 
Shoot out contagious immortality 
And annihilate the dark, interrogating 
Forms of doubt? Behold the man, and summons thought 
Unto the contemplation! Canst thou dream 
That he is like the morn's fantastic shows 
Of imagery, king-like in magnificence 
And pomp, and then in one brief hour eclipsed, 
Eclipsed, dissolved and clean extinguished? 
He makes his highway through this wilderness 
As a sun-path morn paves across the waters. 
He breasts the noble avenue he treads 
With mansions of celestial masonries, 
Setting up at every gate monuments 
And intellectual marbles that incarnate 
A portion of his spirit. He sends abroad 
Beautiful forms, living emanations 
Of himself, nurslings of immortality 
That follow him through life. These arching skies 
Become a synod of enthroned divinities, 
For all illustrious souls of time he there 
Assembles and in divinest fellowship 
Preserves the god-like man at his true height. 
Great sounds and strains of everlasting song 
From some enthroned eternity above 
His spirit hears, and like a thunder flings 
It round these portals of the universe. 
The gates of birth he wreaths with morning glories 
And stations Light and Song to welcome in 
The generations to front the dawn and day. 
From Pisgah's mounts of lofty contemplation. 
Along the mighty walls of time, upon 
The vast eternity before he draws 
Great sun-bright symbols of progress, conquest. 
Dominion, majesty and immortality 
That challenges from age to age the reverence 
Of mankind. 

Man, beneath this world-creating genius, breeds 
A glorious progeny that wear the parents' 
Virtue and perpetuate their greatness. 
But pause and contemplate the great conceptions 
That ever spring from man's creating spirit. 

82 



What a race of king-like men are reason's sons? 

What princesses does imagination 

Mother? What royal issue love begets 

Out of the heart? Faith, hope, joy, purity. 

Truth and honor seem high heaven's descended souls. 

What tall, right-handed angels rise to meet 

And keep society with conscience? Reverence, 

Wonder, silence, v^orship and self-sacrifice 

Seem the very incarnations of a god. 

But are in truth mere portions of the man. 

Behold the quality! Are these the earth's 

Raw elements, but purified in fire 

And organized to rule the mountains, seas 

And air? These are of another nature. 

With other source and ends, for they translate 

Themselves into the temple-heart of great 

Eternity as their own native home. 

Will not such a being live? If man's works, 
If the creatures of his heart and mind. 
The mere shadows of the living spirit. 
Live on, defying time and change and death, 
Oh tell me Truth! Can the god-like soul itself 
Lie down at night to sleep a dreamless sleep 
Forever more? Shall man create and be 
The science, art, poetry and religion 
Of the whole world's history and at the end 
But supper fat the worms? 'Tis not to be 
Believed without a violent shock to all 
Our nature. 

All man has done is the least part of man, 
For there's more within than ever has come forth. 
No work draws out and incarnates the soul 
In its complete, rounded and orbed expression; 
For there are elements forever un- 
Translatable out of the heart and mind. 
Man's best creations are fragments of himself — 
Detached portions that bear the stamp, but not 
The full impress of his impassioned spirit. 
Thinkers are always greater than mere thought; 
Singers than songs and heroes than their deeds; 
For these are parts of an unmeasured being. 
Man's height is never reached, his deep is never 
Sounded and his horizons never measured. 
The soaring dreams of his creating mind, 
The consciousness of white intensity. 
The expansions of pure expansive spirit, 
The enginery of his dynamic powers 
Unite him with the universal being 

83 



And give archangel pinions to his flight 

That bear from earth, beyond the solar 

System, through the constellations of the night 

Around the outmost circles of astronomy 

And far into the deeps and void of chaos. 

Still more; his unexhausted powers and gifts 

Doth climb the works on this expansive base. 

The universe so infinite in height, 

Eternal in its ever new construction, 

Glorious, magnificent and most sublime 

In materials, design and vast proportions. 

The filled up height and depth and length and breadth 

All robed resplendent with a billion suns. 

It fronts man's spirit with repressive awe 

Yet to him calls commanding invitation. 

He climbs the earth until great Science crowns 

The world. He marches on the solar system, 

Weighs the planets, tabulates the elements, 

Photographs the process, records the birth 

And growth and death, and writes a tale that common 

Space and time at leisure may fill in. 

He journeys to the flaming constellations 

And undazzled by a thousand times 

Our noonday splendor steps from sun to sun, 

And brings the farthest astronomic globes 

Under the domain of his intelligence. 

Again: he not only climbs the shining worlds 

But the sphere-ruling s_pirits, the angels 

And archangels, dominions, principalities,; 

Powers, geniuses,; divinities and gods.; 

The intelligence of many-sided mind, 

The fires and passions of volcanic, heart, 

The imperial wills of omnipoten-tial power, 

The heroisms that blaze eternal fame, 

And jiigh idealisms that recreate 

The universe and fill it with new races. 

Social forms and still prophetic hopes, 

Oh what are they? These dreams are but projections 

And incarnations of his force, are but ■ 

The fragmentary scraps and patchy sketches 

Of the m.au'the best hours feel to be himself. 

Time's greatest men ai'e fragments of the man; 

A thousand limitations hold him dow^n 

And life's a* dream of what he longs to be. 

Consider this; a part of this same truth: 

Every act begets a greater actor 

And each new work of genius more genius 

In the world and in himself. As the 

84 



Travailing mother is new-born in her child 

The ideal work creates a new ideal 

That all beneath lights into imperfection. 

Just when the soul is pleased and calls it "good," 

That moment doubt is born. The eye divine 

Beholds the new ideal above the world 

And as it shapes the earth to heaven's form 

It feeds into his heart a spark of some 

Eternal discontent that breeds still higher hope. 

None wed the real and the ideal together; 

Hence the bitterness, despondency and grief 

Of gifts that cannot lull express themselves; 

Hence the effort, failure, defeat, despair 

That feeds the heart of man's ambitious hopes. 

What means this helplessness and ever vanquished 
Effort? What means these visions bright that with 
Approach doth shine and rise still higher up? 
What means this unveiling, this revelation, 
These promises that kindle whitest hopes? 
What mean these new expansions, passions. 
Admirations, exultings and communions? 
What means this infinite, this eternal 
Prophecy to all the hungry powers of man? 
What does it mean but a high, inherent. 
Soul-creating, conquering immortality? 

This stretch and reach, this longing and desire. 
This toil, failure, despondency and hope. 
This capacity and ever upward impulse. 
This vanquished and yet unvanquished effort, 
This moulding and yet unmoulded man. 
This cut and clipped, this soaring, shining soul. 
This death defying, annihilation 
Scorning and eternity loving life. 
These alone have often wrought conviction 
In the spirit and firm established faith 
Against the sworded questions of the world. 
I must believe that man forever lives." 

From "The Debate.'* 

THE DREAM. 

Dream, Oh dream. Oh living dream! 
That upon our visions stream, 
Art thou real or only seem? 
Just an image, word or line 
With a breath of life divine 
And a robe of rainbow shine. 
Just a fancy flimsy dressed, 

85 



Glimpse or gleam of something guessed. 
Vision, flash or brightness blest. 
Neither flesh nor blood nor bone; 
Just the frailest phantom known. 
Spirit by the zephyr blown 
Round the world to every zone; 
But divine celestial thing 
Thou dost live upon the wing. 
And forever shine and sing. 

Born within a poet's soul 
When life's distant shining goal 
On his lifted eye-balls roll. 
He first brought thee from the height, 
Brought thee through the strife of night. 
Birth of beauty and delight. 
In his heart as in a fire 
He immersed thee, and thy sire 
Gave thy heart his best desire; 
Then thee kissed thy father nurse. 
On thy lips he left a verse 
Sweeter than the larks unpurse. 
Smiled he beauty on thy face, 
Like the shadow of that grace 
Which his passions ever chase. 

Spirit beautiful to sight! 
Only feeling, form and light. 
Yet a power in day and night. 
Dv/elling in the azure clime. 
Sun or starry birth of time 
Thou hast magic most sublime. 
Shining in the morning hour. 
Standing on the noonday tower, 
Walking mid the twilight bower; 
On the world's immortal heart 
Like a bride in flowers thou art. 
Dreams within the dreams that start. 
Hope and joy and purity. 
Wisdom and her children free. 
See and love and follow thee. 

Man though pompous, swift and proud 
Passes like a flying cloud 
Wrapped unconscious in his shroud. 
All his works of fame and power 
Fellow him in just an Lour 

86 



Down time's phamtom shadowed bower. 

Mountains crumble and decay, 

Seas to vapor pass away, 

Earth herself grows cold and gray. 

Even suns of splendor bright 

Empty in the void their light 

And like cinders circle night. 

All is passing or will pass 

Like the figures in a glass, 

Worlds and men, alas! alas! 

But, Oh dream, thou canst not die! 
Thy immortal heart and high 
Defiest all beneath the sky. 
Nature with her lightning knife 
And her elemental strife 
Cannot even touch thy life. 
Can the blindness, grief and greed 
Which to death this human feed 
Prove contagious to thy breed? 
Can the time that conquest flings 
Over ages, empires, kings. 
Vanquish thee on azure wings? 
Far above all strife and time, 
Royal, princely, pure and prime, 
Livest thou with life sublime. 

Like an angel in the earth 
Beautiful as at her birth, 
Radiant and benign in mirth. 
Thou art flying up and down 
And all beauties that thee crown 
Unveilest free to king and clown. 
Thy rich alabaster heart 
Breaks with passion to impart 
All that makes thee what thou art — 
Kisses sweet, celestial kisses, 
Blisses pure, unblighting blisses. 
And the love man ever misses. 
Heaven's height and matchless grace 
Shines upon thy glorious face 
Like an angel to our race. 

Mother of more dreams divine. 
Thou dost on our spirits shine 
Till for higher love we pine. 
Thou dost light the heart and mind 
And our nobler spirits find 

87 



By the visions that us blind. 
Thou dost enter, lift and nurse 
The hope of this vast universe 
By thy face and heart's unpurse. 
Worlds within our world are built, 
Free from sorrow, fear and guilt, 
Where thou rulest as thou wilt. 
Thou dost fashion, form and crown 
With high heaven's royal gown, 
Virtue, beauty and renown. 

Dream, Oh dream, Oh living dream. 
That upon our visions stream. 
Shine, Oh shine in brighter gleam! 
Surely thou art from the heart 
Whence divinest things all start, * 

Just a smile of life thou art, 
Falling on these sightless eyes. 
Who but mounteth to the skies 
By the passions pure that rise? 
Onward, onward we are led 
Where the dream and deed are wed, 
And with love forever fed. 
Still upon our visions gleam 
Like the beauty whence ye stream! 
Dream, Oh dream, Oh living dream! 

DOWN AND OUT. 

Oh world and all ye elemental powers 
Of nature! Ye titanic incarnations 
Of unembodied being! Ye vast endowers 
Of energy and passioned impulsations 
From the great soul of cosmic circulations! 
All organic and inorganic forces 
Forever fresh and leaping with elations! 
All breath and life from your eternal sources 
Destroying worlds for greater new creations! 
Vast universe upon your endless courses. 
Oh listen to the song when age our youth unhorses! 

Oh day and night! Ye seasons and successions, 
Majestic powers whose panoramic round 
Sweeps over earth as pageantry processions! 
Pulsating earth whose mighty passions bound 
With earthquake throes far in their deep profound! 
Old ocean's vast, immeasureable might 
Girding the globe with thunder singing sound! 

88 



Ye mcuiitaiii ranges forever more bedight 
With solemn ness and majesty encrowued! 
Canyons, rivers, falls, forests, plains and height, 
Oh listen to the song that man doth often write! 

Ye wild and lawless elements of storm, . 
Nature's maniacs in their delirous mirth. 
Night, rain and clouds with angry passions warm 
That rise and drive like furies over earth! 
Ye whirling winds that some convulsive birth 
Sets furiously free with sweeping rage and snort I 
Ye lightning bolts black heaven's tempestuous girth 
Rains like a fire from an artillery fort! 
Ye thunderfc vast like chaos bellowing forth 
Globe rending sounds that rock each cave and court. 
Oh listen to the song time's changes fierce extort! 

There was a time, glorious, memorial time! 
When ye were all my passion and delight. 
More elemental than your own souls sublime 
I found in ye the kindred of my sprite. 
Like and unlike your your essences so whits 
I felt the pulse of this vast universe, 
And from the gulf of boundless day and night 
Ye passed in me and did my spirit nurse. 
The chaos and the cosmic powers that fight 
Did girdle me, and often did immerse 
In those contentions vast that war against the curse. 

I was the chiefest element of life. 
The cosmic passions my being thrilled and thrilled. 
Nature's fountains with measures rich and rife 
Flowed into me with floods that over-filled. 
Drunken, insane, delirous and unstilled. 
One of nature's infinite successions. 
And subject, though intelligent and willed, 
To her enchantment, magic and impressions. 
The reddest life her spirit ever spilled 
Burst into me with impluse and transgressions 
That spurned the common course, possessed by high possessions. 

Ye mighty powers, my kindred and my song! 
I call ye now to witness to the truth. 
When I was young, impulsive, swift and strong, 
Did I not leave man's safe and sheltering booth 
To ?:reet the storms that burst with fierce unruth? 
Wbf'n lightnings deluged both the heavens and earth, 

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When thunders roared like monsters most uncouth, 
When hurricanes swept raging round the girth, 
Bare-hrowed and open-breasted did my youth 
Not wander forth and, centered in the dearth, 
Mingled my life with thine in most delirious mirth^ 

Have I not climbed and traveled round and round 
These azure deeps of palpitating skies? 
In ocean's pure and fathomless profound 
Did I not sink and another man arise? 
These mountain ranges on my astonished eyes 
Subdued and filled with transcendental migh':. 
Nature's convulsions and impassioned cries 
Were reproduced within my narrow sprite. 
The great dynamic souls that energize 
The universe with thy soul did unite 
And shocks and shocks of life sent through me with delight. 

Oh power sublime, thou wert my element! 
I lived and m^oved and had my life in power. 
My spirit felt the touch of the omnipotent 
As passions vast my being did endower. 
These more than infinite energies that tower 
On glorious night I loved to contemplate, 
And sometimes sunk out of the mortal hour 
And rose into the forces that create. 
This glorious, effulgent, constellated bower 
With momentums of eternity and fate 
I yielded to and breasted till power did satiate. 

But nov/, oh now, oh woeful, woeful now! 
All I can do is sit and just remember; 
A ghost of life upon time's leafless bough 
Dreaming of June in cold and sleet November. 
Once T was fire; now I'm a dying ember; 
There brilliant flame; here but a flickering light 
Before the long and black nights of December. 
My youth, my strength, my passion and my right 
Are gone, all gone, and now a dying member. 
Earth soon will fling far down the pits of night 
The rank, decaying corpse out of her living sight. 

All summer long I'm worn out with the heat. 
I've hardly strength to go the rounds of toil. 
I scarce can stand ten hours upon my feet 
To do the work that hath and doth despoil. 
The wine of life, the precious, precious oil 

90 



Ts all buraed up. I'm fallen down! I can't 
Come back! I'm spent! I'm all in! The petty broil 
For just my bread is strife that I would scant. 
Each day I drag from the exhausting moil 
Too tiled to think the old, upbraiding rant, 
But sit beside the door and pant and pant and pant. 

The bright, autumnal season circles round 
That once did lift unto the summits high; 
Great pageanti-ies in golden splendoTs gowned 
March over earth, the mountains, seas and sk3^ 
My heart leaps up. Visions upon me fly. 
And mighty dreams invite the singer's song. 
I faiii would rise to write and often try, 
But back I fall to the oblivious throng. 
I have not strength; the passions flame and die; 
Great poetries are only for the strong. 
A leaf, a wave, a cloud, I'm swept by time along. 

Winter, winter, thou overwhelming dread! 
Beholding thee I'm cold and dark and sere; 
An influence from the kingdom of the dead 
Surrounds me like a poisoned atmosphere. 
The last strength of this bowed and broken peer 
Beholding thee doth almost stand aghast. 
I tremble at thy coming swift and near, 
For life's assassins are round thy presence massed. 
I'm marked for death. I'm struck. I'm on the bier. 
Oh Life! Perhaps this winter is thy last; 
Ere spring revives the flowers thou shalt away have passed. 

There's nothing now before me but the "If," 
The great "Perhaps," the vast interrogation. 
The pause, emphasis and silence on the cliff 
Of being as the spirit's contemplation 
Stands up to scan this infinite creation. 
The earth and man and all that live and die. 
The splendors of night's flaming congregation, 
The golden sun and solar passion high, 
Eternity and blank annihilation 
Now write upon the dark'ning western sky 
A vast interrogation of "what?" and "where?" and "why?" 

THE INTERROGATION MARK. 

Strange, solemn, great is that mysterious birth 
By which this consciousness arose in man. 
None can expound though they have sought all earth 

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And up to God and some creating plan. 
If we could look with solar lightning scan 
In infant minds as they burst from the dark, 
Would we not find a torturing, twisting clan 
Biting the soul? Would there not he a spark 
With flash divine that Life would gladly fan? 
Would it not grow, form from the stinging stark 
A- white interrogation, mind's first and final mark. 

Young, fresh and strong and drunk with nature's life 
We hail the world in brightest splendors gowned. 
Impulsive with the blindest passions rife 
We stand before time's golden doors and pound, 
Bending to hark, at the merest phantom sound 
We almost scream with wild ejaculation. 
The heavens above, all time and earth we round 
Striking all things with straight interrogation. 
Life is a dream till strife is on us bound, 
Then dies in grief the sweet intoxication. 
And from within without the mark doth shift its station. 

As wise we grow, expanding nature's bound 
Science, the great high priest of m^odern time, 
Unveils the worlds that gird us round and round. 
We travel up great avenues sublime 
With mansions reared for tall archangels prime. 
Alas, alas! All paths lead to the dark. 
Science, history, theology and rhyme 
Delight the mind like palaces and parks; 
But as we follow on at last we climb 
To where they front interrogation marks, 
Lean, passioned, hungry, fierce, consuming life like sharks. 

Oh Life, Oh Life! Strange, strange, mysterious Life! 
Thou piercest us till we pierce back at thee, 
As if the end of time's eternal strife 
Were but to find and set a spirit free 
Whose daring strength would probe infinity. 
Thou art of all our mysteries most veiled, 
Though thou the mother art, and man's divinity. 
Forever bare, questioned and fierce assailed. 
Thou hidest from this searching consanguinity 
Our source, purposes and destinies unsealed; 
The more our wisdom probes, the more our wise are paled. 

Deep cries to deep out of all living thought: 
Is man immortal? Does some Father care? 

92 



He seems the end for which the world was wrought. 

There should be One whose bosom love should bear. 
Wisdom and age and often virtue rare 
Are tempest tossed and driven to the dark. 
"Oh, help us, help!" we cry in our despair, 

But still drives on and wrecks our mortal bark. 

All through our life, when death away doth tear 

We see a forni, impassioned, fierce and stark. 
O'er God and man a vast interrogation mark. 

Thus ail the earth is full of solemn questions. 
The race itself dissolves into the sign. 
O'er all man's history, his works and civilizations 
Is the unciphered riddle none divine. 
The vast eonic ages slow untwine 
And write the same old history of the earth 
In changing forms that emphasize the line 
The Sphinx has writ on our mysterious birth. 
The great and wise question and pause and pine 
Beholding life in such chaotic dearth. 
What mighty questions rise and bound our little girth! 

On SM'eep the worlds in endless, endless ages. 
Thousands of years are waves upon the beach. 
Life lives and writes her solar system pages 
And then descends death's plumbless, plumbless breach. 
Globes Jive and die. This world and others preach 
The infinite insignificance of man. 
Can life on these high sister planets reach 
Beyond it here and crown creation's plan? 
The vanities of life and man impeach 
The faith. Thinkers since long the v/orld began 
Have drawn the solemn sign and silent stood to scan.- 

The spirit of all modern life and light 
Oft makes the globe a pedestalic base 
And sweeps the constellations of the night. 
When peering o'er the gulf of time and place. 
What splendors of a transcendental grace 
Eternal shine upon the dome so dark? 
Life doth behold. Upon the voids of space, 
Large as a boundless hemispheral arc, 
Millions of suns, billions of worlds her face 
And question with infinities of cark. 
Till soul in silence stands, cold, solemn, pale and stark. 

So thus the universe we mortals see 
93 



Becomes a vast interrogation mark. 
The lightning stars of white intensity 
Arrange themselves into a mighty arc 
Upon the dome so measureless and dark. 
Effulgent, passioned, immovable, immense, 
It fronts the generations with the stark- 
Est emphasis that ever strikes the sense. 
Towering, sweeping, descending as an arch — 
Angel's masterstroke, it strikes intelligence 
And holds all wisest minds in bondage and suspense. 

MAGNANIMITY. 

Magnanimity! 'Tis a royal word. 
There's a spring of inspiration in the sound. 
The very thought out of the heart has stirred 
Another man. Up from the deeps profound 
The man in man springs instant with a bound. 
He feels the passion of a spacious sprite 
Roll through his fame, and as life circles round 
Some power divine doth with the dream unite. 
A majesty doth sit on him; he is gowned 
With splendor; his right arm is glorious in might; 
And new treated worlds swing instant into sight. 

Oh largeness, greatness, nobleness of soul. 
Thou art an image of divinity! 
Supremest of the essences that roll 
Through nature's heart unto the vast infinity! 
Kindred of closest consanguinity 
Unto the powers that crown the universe! 
The One, or strange, mysterious Trinity 
Straight brings thee forth, and thy parental nurse 
Delights to find in thee his best affinity. 
The mighty worlds no better can unpurse; 
The spheres were made for thee and doth thy presence verse. 

Expansion, exaltation, pride and power, 
Independence, courage and generosity 
And prophecy all crown thee with endower. 
To friends thou are a keen impetuosity; 
And to thy foes a moment's fierce ferocity, 
And then a swift reaction to thy high 
Magnanimous soul; a lightning bolt velocity 
'Gainst oppression; a defense to all who cry; 
A separation and reciprocity 

With ihe great mass that round thee live and die; 
Thou art the man 'livine for which we ever sigh. 

94 



We see thee there. Great nature's glorious stamp 
Is visible and shining forth from thee. 
In heaven and earth, street, college, court and camp, 
Wherever noble cosmopolitan spirits be 
Thou art at home. The high fraternity 
Feels (he mighty passions of the universe • 
That from thee radiate. No wonder we, 
Conceived, conditioned and consigned in curse 
Unto thy height are blind and cannot see. 
Sense, strife and greed our spirits deep immerse 
And great, magnanimous men us seldom wake and nurse. 

Alas I We common men are scraps, mere patches 
To the ideal with heaven's height and eyes. 
We look abroad, the great earth only hatches 
Fragmentary characters. Each man belies 
The prophecy that flames upon him. Birth ties 
The name of man upon us, but Life and Time 
Strip off the masquerading rags, disguise 
Them as we will. Creation or our crime 
Only suggests, though Life forever cries 
Tn travailing pain and prophecies sublime 
For full-orbed, rounded man in his immortal prime 

How rare, how rare such visions on us flash! 
Labor and sense, fear, selfishness and greed 
Strangle the youth of passion, power and dash. 
And narrow, small and common natures breed. 
Blinded and lost and bleeding in our need. 
And heaven deaf unto our anguish cries, 
Even as dreams the ideal is unfreed 
To front us with its vast, colossal size. 
We round our years, we suffer, toil and read, 
Crown earth and time, mount and explore the skies, 
But great, magnanimous dreams but seldom on us rise. 

Nature, nature! How miserly and prodigal 
Thou art! What infinite, infinite waste 
Of solar life, society and all 

Bestrew thy paths! Vast planet systems haste 
Unto the scrap as our machines displaced; 
And yet so miser, so m.iserly of men. 
The greatest need of this humanity debased, 
Need of magnanimous types upon our ken. 
Thou givest as if tortured or disgraced! 
Thy chief delight is beast and fog and fen. 
On infinite resource, so miserly of men! 

95 



Conception grows as soul rounds out the years. 
We deeper sink, widen and higher rise, 
And sorrov/, loss, fear, bitterness and tears 
Give passion and intensity to size. 
Lite mounts the plane; sweeps the eternal skies 
And gods, prophets, heroes and geniuses divine 
Grow flecked and flawed and common to our eyes. 
But as they fade for something fierce we pine 
To take the place of those denied the prize. 
Spirit of Life, creating Power benign, 
This scientific age, Oh match with spirits fine! 

Ye mighty worlds of astronomic space, 
Ye countless years of vast eternity, 
Immortal Souls that give creation grace, 
And hopes and dreams of high supernity, 
Is there a sphere whose ripe maternity 
Mothers the great and nurtures the ideal? 
Is there a race of high modernity, 
A glorious congregation of real 
Magnanimous spirits in fraternity? 
If such there be the lightning night unseal, 
And on our blinded eyes the splendors bright reveal. 

Oh for the sake of this humanity. 
For hope and life and coming generations, 
For those high dreams that struggle vrith insanity. 
For God enthroned on his supremest stations 
Give us some men — spirits and dominations — 
Force, virtue and intelligence — the stamp 
Of old eternity — the incarnations 
That make men feel heroes of old doth tramp 
The fiarth once more — globe-balancing creations 
Before whose conqu'ring countenance decamp 
The foes of life as night before the morning's lamp. 

Give us the great, magnanimous immortals 
Whose nobleness can guide the generations 
That enter now the morning's golden portals! 
Give us the great prime ministers that ride 
The ages and from their lofty stations 
Inspire the world in its new recreations! 
Give us the men that match and mate the dreams 
Of the mighty transcendental inspirations 
That eternity to time prophetic streams! 
Give us the men the world-soul's lamentations 
Forever calls, and yet forever seems 
Denied the only hope that life and time redeems! 

96 



LOSS AND GAIN. 

Oh World! Oh Life! Oh Time! 
Oh trinity of crime! 

Your dark, dark stain, deepning to hell's last night, 
Blots each immortal soul in their young prime 

Of passion and delight! 

Why is white passioned youth 
Farthest from vital truth? 

. Why does our morn with visions bright deceive 
Us into loss, darkness and sorrow ruth, 
And there our spirits leave? 

Why should such awful weight 
Of senses foulest mate 

Ambitious pride? and so our spirits curse. 
As souls in bonds but far divorced by fate, 

Each make the other worse. 

Our first impulsive years 

Are washed with crimson tears; 

Our memories bear such matter for regret 
As oft will cloud her sister hope with fears 

On which no rainbows set. 

Oh World! Oh Life! Oh Time! 
Let loss and pain and crime 

Break pride and sense, and teach us how to gain 
Faith, love and trust, and promises to climb 
The starry breasted heights of God, which chime: 

"Come up and here remain." 

THE SKY- AND SEA-LINE. 

I never gaze upon the sky 

Where it doth meet the sea 
But something from the sight of it. 
Some beauty from the light of it. 
Some tension from the might of it 

Deep enters into me. 

I grow oblivious to the world 

And give the spirit sway. 
A strange,, mysterious drift of life, 
A rare, celestial gift of life, 
Power, passion, pulse and lift of life 

Doth bear me far away. 

97 



I give my sails unto thy breeze, 

Oh boundless ocean wide! 
The vast, profound and deep of thee. 
Majestic course and sweep of thee, 
Momemtum, tides and leap of thee 

I never dreamed to ride. 

liost to myself I fly away 

Where mortals never sail. 
The man that dreams is found in me, 
He leaps up with a bound in me, 
I feel him gowned and crowned in me, 

And doth the prospect hail. 

Oh ocean rich and deep and wide, 

Roll, roll into my soul! 
Unto the dream and dulce of life 
The passion, poise and pulse of life, 
The earthquake and convulse of life, 

Thou dost my spirit pole. 

Sail on! Adventure forth! Oh sail! 

Thy bark is on the sea. 
These skies upon the heights around, 
These worlds that lend their lights around 
These prophet songs and sights around 

Proclaim eternity. 

THE CANDY MAKER. 

A husband or. a winter night 

Vv'^as sitting in his home. 
Within the open fire was bright, 

Without the snowy foam. 
The nursing wife with joy and pride 

His honeyed praises sung; 
When suddenly he stopped the tide 

And this song on her flung: 

"Oh wife, Oh wife! I do declare. 

You have a gift divine! 
A special gift both rich and rare 

For sweetmeats superfine. 
You are a candy maker sure 

Of most delicious skill; 
A genius that can sweets secure 

Where others find but ill. 

98 



"Oh never yet confectioner 

Of any Christmas town 
Had in liis windows, I aver. 

Such candies of renown! 
Your goods are always fresh and bright; 

Your stock is never low. 
Sure some one buys them day and night 

To keep you busy so. 

"Have you within your heart and mind 

Some syrups most divine, 
Or honey that the bee did find 

In flowers of perfumed wine? 
Did Cupid on your marriage day 

Give you a ewer filled. 
That such a flavor makes its way 

In what your hands have skilled? 

"A woman yet was never seen 

Who gum-drops makes as you. 
Who eats of these though he is lean 

Will fatten up anew. 
Though sugared o'er unto the eye 

They're drops of vital health. 
No woman in the land, I say. 

Makes gum-drops like yourself. 

"And taffy, when you taffy make 

I like to see you pull. 
Molasses black you twist and shake 

To snowy beautiful. 
Your tafl^y-making is your forte. 

Your glory and enjoy; 
You make enough for king and court 

In half an hour's employ. 

"When I forget myself and eat 

Your candies make me tight. 
I feel unsteady in my feet 

And in my head am light. 
Oh! Should the public chance to find 

Prom whence my madness came, 
That you by candies so did bind, 

I'd die of very sEame. 

"I must preserve myself at once 

Before it is too late. 
Oh old and silly, silly dunce, 

99 



To sport with such a fate! 
Your praises are a danger, Dear, 

And ere they run their course 
I'd better intercept the fear 

And from it far divorce. 

"Ye candy-makers of the town! 

Oh here I advertise 
A taffy-puller of renown, 

A gum-drop making prize! 
A new machine for finest creams. 

For caramels and puffs; 
She'll boom your business to your dreams 

With sweetest toothsome stuffs. 

"But hold! Oh hold! Don't all apply! 

She's gone out on the strike. 
She swears she"ll scrub or starve or die 

Ere work for her dislike. 
And Oh, her likes are passing strange! 

I'll whisper this to thee: 
She says, of all the men that range 

She'll work for only me 

"Well, well. My Dear! Work on for me! 

rir keep the solemn vow. 
This touch of weakness that I see. 

For thee I'll large allow. 
These praises with a pinch of salt 

I'll take. Oh wife, from thee. 
There might be blame for many a fault, 

But love is blind, I see." 

THE DREAMED OF. 

Spirit of the azure sky. 
Princess of the heavens high. 
Woman to the angels nigh! 
Thou art realer than the real 
Though the senses cannot feel, 
Spirit. of my soul's ideal! 
Nearer than the noisy near. 
Though no whipsers either hear 
Princess crowning all my sphere! 
Brighter than the brightest bright 
Though unseen to mortal sight, 
Woman with a soul of light* 
Dream far more than flesh and bone. 
Heard and seen and touched and known, 

100 



Angel of my spirit's thronel 

Stately, slender, tail and fair. 
Crowned with beauties rich and rare, 
Robes of virtue thou dost wear. 
In thy face thy soul of light 
Shines and glows with color bright 
Like thy passions red and white. 
Rise and fall upon thy breast 
Sweetness, peace and love raid rest, 
Thou and them forever blest. 
In thy rich and happy mind 
Dawn and twilight beauties kind, 
Flowers and birds and dreams divined. 
Fountains spring up in thy heart. 
Music, sorrow, song and art 
That the worlds immortal bart. 

1 have loved thee with a fear. 
Standing far, then drawing near 
Smiles and words and welcomes dear, 
Love inspired a living faith 
Neither life nor death could scathe. 
Doubt or fear or phantom wraith. 
Faith has clothed me with a power 
That all hero souls endower 
From high heaven's highest tower. 
Power was crowned and crowned with joy 
That has never dreamed annoy. 
Sorrow, wrinkle, fear or cloy. 
Joy seemed heaven's purest fire, 
Self consuming in desire, 
Growing deeper, wider, higher. 

We have been together oft. 
Granite strength and beauty soft. 
Riding far and far aloft. 
In the early morning dawn, 
On the dewy splendored lawn. 
Seen the rainbow curtains drawn. 
On the hills where visions be, 
Watched rich sunsets in the sea 
Till the tears were flowing free. 
When the golden moon was round 
Soaring, soaring, music bound. 
Where the fairy dreams were found. 
Milky ways of flaming night 
Often circled with delight, 

101 



Growing deep and strong and white; 
Then descending to the earth 
Found still greater strength and mirth 
In each other's wealth of worth. 

I have dreamed and dreamed of thee 
Till no dream could realer be, 
Giving life and light to me. 
Alabaster boxes fine, 
Treasures, perfumes, figs and wine 
1 have offered at thy shrine. 
Songs and dreams of fire and flame 
AVith the robes and crowns of fame 
From my breast to greet thee came. 
In thy presence I have felt 
Something hard and stony melt 
Till in tears I bowed and knelt. 
I have soared on eagle's wings, 
Scorning high immortal kings. 
Thrones and crowns and robes and rings. 
Angel of the morn to me, 
Light and peace and purity 
From beyond the glassy sea! 

But, 'tis as well as never met; 
I thy spirit pure would fret, 
Bleed thy heart and bosom wet. 
I was born out of the years, 
Marked for strife and grief and fears, 
Weeping blood instead of tears. 
Selfish, passioned and intense. 
Most unbalanced soul and sense, 
Heart and brain with storms immense. 
I am but the common clay, 
Life and time, greed, night and day, 
Blinded, driven on my way; 
Poor and harnessed, worked and fed 
Gravel stones instead of bread 
Till I wish that I were dead. 
Often gladness doth me shake, 
Flesh and blood thou didst not take 
And thy heart I did not break. 

In the ages that untwine, 
'Mong the starry worlds that shine, 
On eternal travels fine. 
Shall we ever, ever meet, 

102 



With an equal passion greet, 
And our hearts together beat? 
Purged, renewed and glorified, 
Strength and purity allied, 
Shall I meet thee as my bride? 
When I climb to thy far sphere 
Shall I meet thee with a tear 
That thy lover doth appear? 
In my breast hear whispers fine 
Piercing me like fire benign: 
"Mine, Oh mine, forever mine!" 

THE ECHO. 

Hush, hush my heart, be still! 

Listen with bated breath! 
Silence thy being fill 

As motionless as death! 
A soft celestial voice; a world for what she saith! 

Oh hush my heart! The birth 

And being most divine 
I ever heard on earth, 

Between her world and mine 
Is singing, and my life for hers I would resign. 

Oh matchless soul of song! 

Spirit of melody! 
Angel of singer throng, 
And from all body free; 
The most divinest life inspires the heart in thee. 

Thy spirit Nature greets; 

Her singers silent be; 
Wave, stream and tree entreats 

Thy music rich and free. 
And drink and drink and drink thy living melody. 

Unseen, enchanting fairy! 

Unknown, beloved sprite! 
On ether wings most airy 

With far encircling flight, 
Round lake and o'er the hills thy song rolls with delight, 

Awaking joy so pure 

The souls that hear thee sing, 
The strain cannot endure 

And from their hearts they fling 

103 



Tbeir love and joy and praise, and toward thee nearer s 

Joyous, intense and clear, 

A song new come to birth; 
A singer from a sphere, 

A bright and lyric mirth. 
Who sings to ease her heart and not for ours of earth. 

Pure and liquid soul! 

Dewy and rich and deep! 
Winds, clouds and azures roll 
The notes they cannot keep, 
And now they forth through thee to vocal being leap. 

Oh soft and dying tone! 

More far and faint and dear! 
A music seraph's moan 
In his beloved's ear 
Is mingled with the breath which now I faintly hear. 

Fainter and more faint! 

Softer and more sweet! 
As a maiden saint 

Breaths when the angel feet 
Bear her lily, lily soul far down earth's shadowed street. 

Fainter and more faint, 

Your music is no more. 
As last words of a saint 
Speak to our spirit's core. 
Your silence is a song of sweet and lasting lore. 

Silent now, Oh silent! 

Bat spirits listening be, 
Are listening with intent 
And hear the measures free 
That ever rise and ring as memory thinks of thee. 

Oh clear and crystal singer! 

Again to life awake! 
Oh clear and crystal singer! 

Across the moon-light lake 
Your happy happy elfin horns, shake out again, Oh shake! 

Awake again. Oh wake! 

My heart for song doth pine! 
Thy lips again unbreak, 

104 



And thy sweet voice divine 
Will be a lasting strain as on me ye untwine! 

Hark! Does the deepest fountain, 

The lake's divinest daughter. 
Love the snowy mountain, 

The soul above the water. 
And whisi)eres now a song as fervent love hast taught her? 

Does now some silver dream 

From icy summits free 
Through rocky gorges stream 

AVith fall and foam and glee, 
And sing his bridal song as happy as can be? 

Does the moon's bright soul 

Touch her golden lyre, 
And drink night's dewy bowl 

A new song to inspire 
For her other soul of deep and pure desire? 

Is heaven's world of love 

Here the nearest earth? 
Does some warm turtle dove. 
O'er her dearest birth 
Now throw upon our ears her first, sweet, mother mirth? 

Has some sweet fairy sprite 

From Paradise just fell? 
In her descending flight 
Tinkles her fairy bell 
In silver silver tones that swell and ever swell? 

Oh spirit, who art thou? 

Whence and what and where? 
Could I but see thee now, 

Thy being pure and fair 
Would be a sight divine which love would treasure rare. 

But better thus unseen 

Like all things most divine; 
For nothing comes between 
Thy heart and hungry mine, 
And that encircling heart which all our hearts enshrine. 

Oh echo, thy refrain 
Is like a life to me! 

105 



It passes through my brain 
And kindred finds to thee; 
Waking the sleeping dreams in coldest memory. 

T listen, yes, I listen! 

I know! I know! I know! 
Mine eyes with sorrows glisten, 

My heart doth overflow. 
Spirit of innocence from paradise, I trow! 

Thy spirit once was mine, 

And I was like to thee; 
We both were then divine 

And loved with purity; 
But life divorces hearts that in each other be. 

Soul of celestial dower! 

Angel of early years! 
The music of that hour 

That hour still. more endears; 
To hear thee once again now meltsmy frozen tears! 

Oh hear me as I cry! 

Come to me once again! 
Leave thy blue native sky! 

Abide with mortal men! 
Forgive and lead me from this dark and stifling fen! 

Oh dost thou turn away? 

I hear thy velvet feet 
More faintly as I pray. 

Shall this new warming meet 
No hope that here or hence thy spirit I shall greet? 

More fainter and more faint 

I hear thee die away. 
As dieth my complaint 

For lack of words to pray 
For thee and thine and all of that eclipsed day. 

Beyond the hills afar 

I hear thee going fleet. 
Go, going to the star 

Of morning, morning sweet; 
And I would follow fast in hope we there may meet. 

Sing, sing Ye Echo Souls! 
106 



Oh often sing to me! 
Divinest music rolls 

And leads where none can see, 
When e'er 1 hear your sweet, celestial melody, 

' Sing, sing Ye Echo Sprites! 
Your silence oft unbind! 
From heaven's golden heights 
Ye open on my mind 
Such dreams of purity as lift and cleanse and blind. 

Sing, sing Ye Echo Hours! 

Although ye wake the tears 
Ye lift me to the towers 

With virtue of the spheres, 
And life's golden summits pure to the spirit far appears. 

RECREATION. 

The world again is made anew, 

A mighty spirit vast 
With sword divides without ado 

The future firom the past, 
And makes the present like an hour 
Of new creation, life and dower. 

Science destroys and new creates 

The world down to its core. 
The base and brutes and high estates 

She fashions to the lore 
That built the universe we see 
And thinks from long eternity. 

She spreadeth out diviner skies, 

A more resourceful earth. 
The glorious forms that round her rise 

Eclipse the morning's birth. 
The mighty sketches on her brain 
Are being wrought before her reign. 

The mounted, traveled skies are mapped. 

The vasty deep explored,' 
Great nature's treasure house is tapped. 

Her secrets long unlored; 
Her bosom's rich resources rife 
Supplieth hope electric life. 

107 



New social institutions spring: 

Away all kings and crowns; 
The spirit new new forms dotli bring; 

The man the office downs; 
Democracy now rules the earth. 
And brings more democrats to birth. 

Philosophies, psychologies 

Are being made anew. 
Cosmologies, theologies, 

Must to the facts be true. 
From nature's truth, from space and time 
Great Science thinks and speaks sublime. 

Another human starts its race 

But up and never down; 
They give the new creation grace, 

It doth them robe and crown. 
Strength, wisdom, boldness, enterprise, 
Against the future they arise. 

Another thinker silent thinks; 

A new designer plans; 
The latest doer never shrinks; 

Life high approving scans; 
Great cosmic builders clothed with power 
Renew the earth from hour to hour. 

Another sailor sails the seas, 

A new machinist flies; 
Another poet charms the trees, 

And soldiers new arise; 
A noble breed, a mighty race. 
Erect and strong the morning face. 

Farewell Oh Rome! Farewell Oh Greece! 

Thinker and soldier old! 
All hist'ries have outrun their lease. 

Are to oblivion rolled, 
These modern worlds eclipse thy light 
As morning doth the stars of night. 

Oh welcome Life! Oh welcome Hope! 

Your larger circles run! 
Your journeys mount a noble slope 

Inviting to the sun. 
And ringing round the splendored arch 
Great Science sings: "Right onward march!' 

108 



THE SONG OF SOUL AGAINST SENSE. 

A PLEA FOR EUGENICS. 

The city was a carnival and court 
For throngs of wealth and fashion and display. 
Youth, strength and age did with each other sport 
To make the week a perfect pleasure way. 
Triumphant arches, flags and streamers gay, 
Uniforms and gowns, cars, carriages and horse, 
And pageantries and marches filled the day. 
Bright auto-lamps and electric lights of force 
And music strong the multitude did sway. 
Wine, song and dance, and all that undercourse 
Filled night with revelry and day would far divorce. 

I went down town and on the Campus square 
Stood calm in contemplation. It was to me 
A masquerade, an insane drama rare 
Before the stars, God and eternity. 
T swept the scene and strained my eyes to 3ee 
Some Hebrew prophet. What profanation 
Of man, and thoughtless, thoughtless blasphemy 
Against the solar hopes of life! Incarnation 
Of all that man was ever dreamed to be. 
Come forth, come forth; Behold the contemplation! 
The world and time and life in insane desecration! 

Then suddenly a soul gigantic rose. 
'Twas no ideal descending heaven's height. 
Nor some high dream on which the flesh did close 
For one short hour; nor any gifted sprite, 
A genius great among the sons of night. 
No! It was the man. Some power did disenlangle 
His spirit from the powers of deadly blight. 
And rending off the senses that us strangle, 
A giant rose with countenance of light. 
I hastened o'er the Campus and its wrangle; 
For one ripe soul outweighs the world and all it's spangle. 

I would have spoke but felt that presence awe, 
I followed close as to that virtue bound. 
He sauntered down the Avenue and saw 
Far more than eyes or senses ever sound. 
Then up and down, across and back ;ind round 
The city's heart is traveled. He saw the things 
That darkness hides within her deeps profound — 

109 



The night-born dreams round which the darkness springs, 
The doings of the senses under-ground, 
The abortions and mis-gendered births she brings. 
The lawless lawless license night covers with her wings. 

At length unto the Campus we returned, 
He paused and looked. I saw the clouds of cark 
Upon his brow. Within his bosom burned 
The whitest indignation, and shadows dark 
Grew darker to his flaming sight. Hark! Hark! 
He is about to speak. A mighty speech 
Is on those lips as from a hierarch 
Of heaven, a song or tale that will impeach 
The world. Arise oh Time and Life, and mark 
The utterance! Let his high message reach 
The man within the man and truth supremest teach I 

"Oh spirit of the world, ancestral Time, 
Prolific Eve and Father of the race. 
Organic laws, great Nature's self sublime 
And mighty births that round her ever pace. 
Ye virtues that the cosmic soul embrace, 
Ye first divinities of man, Ye high 
And sacred pieties of life, your grace 
So high lend to the scene that doth defy 
All presence pure. Your full, unclouded face 
To your own birth ye surely will supply; 
As now your flrst-born speaks stand up and round and nigh. 

"And ye I call, each noble offspring birth 
Out of man's heart and infinite desire; 
Immortal thoughts of golden weight and worth. 
High passioned dreams and visions winged with fire 
For heaven's height, far prophecies that choir 
New measures down the age, ideals and hopes. 
Love, truth, delight and verse that ever tire 
Your strength to climb life's steep and rugged slopes, 
Sublimost souls the travailing world can sire, 
I call on ye as soul in darkness gropes; 
Great spirits witness now as my full spirit opes!" 

"Ye Heavens above. Thrones, Virtues, Dominations 
That fill these glorious galleries of the night, 
Rounded Perfections, sublimest Adorations 
And Splendors with a solar radiant sight, 
Ye Majesties and Principalities bright 
Beyond all dreams, thou Eternity and train 

110 



Of fair immortals, thou God above the height 
Of this vast' universe shall it be vain 
To summon here your purities so white? 
Descend, descend! The barriers burst in twain. 
Behold and hear and help with high inspire the strain!" 

"I panel ye a high official court, 
A jury called upon the hour of man; 
Your solemn oath is told and doth exhort 
Your living spirits. With a solar scan 
And lightning penetration look on the plan 
And this blind approach of being. Behold 
The hour! Sanction the right and put thy ban 
On elemental thought if she should hold 
Ought but the truth. Ye are the clan 
Before whom soul would stand erect and bold, 
Appealing to the faith, unsworn, unsoiled, unsold." 

"I hate to summons ye unto the pens 
Of darkness, and introduce you to the breeds 
That lair and whelp in thsee unrivered dens. 
The incarnation of demoniac creeds 
Here work themselves into infernal deeds. 
Behold the flesh! Here is the world of sense. 
Tear off the masquerades deception feeds 
To sight! See man in his unpretense, 
Organic nature! Mark these consuming greeds, 
Like hungers starved, vast, passioned and immense. 
I adjure you to the sight with vision most intense!" 

"Oh what a sight for soul's all-piercing eyes! 
'Tis inconceivable unto the mind 
Of purity. It would instant paralyze 
With deadly shame the high celestial kind 
Around the thrones of heaven. It blindeth blind 
The sun-like visions that out of heaven shine 
with such vital, glorious brightness they find 
The noblest man in man. All the divine 
That nature breeds in earth is here consigned 
To a descent far low-er than the swine. 
Do not disgrace the beasts and nature's work malign!" 

"Oh, vastly, vastly worse these human beasts 
Than any dumb creations! Indulgence 
Passes the bounds of nature, like the feasts 
And revels strange of most insanest sense. 
Can this be man? Is this the dominance 

111 



Of heaven and her high, supreme endower? 
'Tis some insensate, fierce incontinence 
That doth possess the soul — usurping power. 
Blind, raad and lost in its extravagance. 
Oh flesh, Oh flesh, Oh suicidal hour, 
Thus to dehumanize till they themselves devour!" 

"What infinite, infinite degradations, 
Sheer, sheer descent and deadly blasting blight! 
What most deformed, diseased disfigurations 
Upon the man designed for heaven's height! 
What most monstrous malformations and night- 
Engendered things — unhuman forms of sense — 
Almost cannibalistic shapes bedight - . 

In hugGst disproportions and offense! 
Abortions, unnatural miscreations, sight- 
Repulsions and abhorrences immense 
Are here before the eyes and dare not issue hence." 

"This hour and place is the world's rankest pen 
Of infamy. Men and women are vile 
Beyond compare; serpents, lizards, dragons 
And breeding broods the very night defile. 
Naked, enfrenzied passions scorn all denial. 
And nature's impulse doth the world defy. 
Gigantic and resistless lusts here pile 
Before their eyes a wholesale, fresh supply. 
Insane desires and mad deliriums smile 
With infinite satisfaction, and lie. 
As in a flowery bed, in this swine-trodden sty." 

"These sensualicies are fierce as fire 
When fed with fuel and fanning most intense. 
The giant strength of other high desire 
Feed all ihey are into the fleshy sense. 
This god-like mould from heaven descended hence. 
What is it but a furnace for the flame 
Of sensuality? This intelligence 
Of vastest powers for heaven's highest aim. 
This mine-like heart with all its stores immense, 
This mighty will no heaven or hell can tame, 
What but the ministers that feed the senses' shame?" 

"The rounded man, the finished sphere of life 
Is driven by the fires of sensuality. 
Its proportions and energies so rife 
Make a city's heart at night a colony 

112 



Of titanic lepers, and impurity 
Smites life with dread disease. The whole place 
Is dark, delivered, poisonous and de- 
Men ted with distempers that disgrace 
Humanity. A sex insanity 

Of heart and brain storms, the mad and driven race 
By raving hungers fierce around the Campus pace." 

" 'Tis unparalleled and unbelievable! 
The globe of man sensualized and doth appear 
Given up to sex. Human natures full, 
Surfeit themselves like drunken gluttons here. 
Tis another Corinth — a Paris — a near 
And modern Sodom — a God-forsaken place — • 
A region dear to demons and a sphere 
Ripe for damnation from the lightning face 
Of heaven. Why does not the earth in awful fear 
Swallow them up? It blasts the brightest grace 
Of man and life and time to round this darkness pace." 

"'Tis a wild, abandoned hour — an incursion 
Of chaos on the cosmos — a prostitution 
Of intelligence and will — a subversion 
Of the supremest, and the institution 
Of man devoted to the execution 
Of the flesh. 'Tis a blasphemous profanity 
To the earth — a contagious, dread pollution 
To the voids of space — a mad insanity 
Fronting eternity, and a devolution 
Before high heaven that makes humanity, 
The universe and God the blindest, blindest vanity." 

"What an infinite, appalling sacrifice 
We pay the greed of this consuming sense! 
The whole round globe that towers to the skies, 
The opening heavens, prophetic and immense 
With empires like the stars of night intense, 
The vastest reach of man and hope and dream. 
The promises of space and time far hence, 
All, all are fed into this greed supreme; 
Are fed like chaff, like refuse of offense, 
Like things of curse corruptions over-teem. 
The quicker they are gone the better life will seem." 

"The strength of youth, of passion and of prime. 
The virtues, hopes and happiness that stream 
And make the world a vision as sublime 

113 



As heaven itself in morning's golden gleam: 
The pride and boast, the glory of life's dream 
And multiplied a thousand thousand fold 
Are gathered up and shovelled as extreme 
And worthless scrap, and to corruption sold. 
The heir of time, inheritor supreme 
Of earth and all the heavens above can hold, 
De-splendored, -robed, -plumed, down sense abysses rolled. 

"All, all of men, the heavens' best creation, 
High spirits great that prophecy doth nurse. 
O'er their own souls a virtuous domination, 
And, if themselves, to crown the universe; 
Down, down they go into the infinite curse 
Of sense, and the blind infatuation rides 
The angel-born down, down and doth immerse. 
After a time the sense that soul bestrides 
Doth suddenly a mighty strength unpurse 
And kicks far down, down, down the suicides; 
Down, down the black abyss, down, down the spirit hides." 

"Down goes the greatest genius of the race. 
The sunlike gifts that might translate the lore 
Of God, and on man's imagination trace 
The high divinities that forever soar 
And glorify yon battlemented shore. 
Down, down the steep-down gulf the senses throw 
Earth's greatest sons, and after them still more 
Of their best kin. Down, down vast spirits go 
As valueless as shadows on the floor, 
As worthless as the beasts of nature low, 
The greatest sons of time sense sinks forevermo." 

"Poet, musician, orator and priest, 
Soldier, scientist, philosopher and king. 
All high inspire that fronts the dawning east 
But never see the noon-day she doth bring; 
These promises that from the common spring 
And sunlike seem among the multitudes, 
'Tis sense far more than death's unseasoned sting 
That bears them down, and place where darkness broods 
In everlasting silence. The senses fling 
Heaven's highest down with nature's mighty feuds 
Where night and wind and rain rave through the solitudes. 

"Beauty, a goddess descended from above, 
An incarnation out of the world divine 

114 



To be a bride and worship of a love 
That frames itself to being's best design — 
Oh heaven! Around the goddess and the shrine 
What blasphemies 'gainst purity arise, 
And are often entertained by the malign 
Communications of lightning speaking eyes! 
Life's sex desires awake and fret and chafe and pine, 
And ravenous as wolves of fiercest size 
They glare and gloat and gloat and struggle for the prize. 

"The beautifuls, the goddesses of earth, 
The first divinities and idolatries 
Of man, radiant and celestial births 
That might be throned on the eternities 
And worshipped as each generation sees; 
Down the abyss, but farther, deeper down 
They go, and quick to worse intensiLies 
Of sex and sense corruption. The worst renow^i 
Of this dark earth rounds beauty's black impurities. 
So that the conscience-hardened night doth frown 
If day should dare unveil or draw her covering gown." 

"The infants mere seem but a sacrifice 
And offering to this Moloch of desire. 
Life stands aghast as sense holds like a vise 
And pours in youth her spirit-blasting fire. 
Sex-latent sparks are kindled with inspire 
Till unteened boys are burning in my sight. 
Life is enraged and fearful in her ire, 
Or horrified, palsied and fixed and white 
To see mere girls sold to commercial hire 
And business traflftc in their divinest right; 
Bought, sold and penned like beasts by monsters of the night.' 

"The full maturity of man is but a fuel 
To feed this hungry, ever-crying maw. 
No burdens, business or restraints can school 
Rebellious flesh to an obedient awe. 
Appearances is but a masquerade men draw 
O'er rank corruptions that underneath are free. 
Stripe life naked and her essential law^ 
Is sex indulgence. The very blind doth see 
Sex is human nature's center, the raw 
And festering soul of human gravity, 
Round which the generations more fast and fixed flee." 

"Even in old age, the decline, the cold ashes 

115 



And burnt-out cinders of the furnace glow, 
'Tis the same sense and rarely spirit flashes 
To purer flames than youth and prime did know. 
What acquiescence to the most blasting foe 
Of man! What an age that never, never dares 
For purity to strike a prophet's blow, 
But leaves the generations to the snares 
Of sense! How oft, how oft a head as white as snow 
Is the rankest rake and in his bosom bears 
A nether-kindled fire that nature's strength outwears." 

"Wliat crimes, what crimes, what black and brutal crimes 
Hast thou not nursed into this guilty earth! 

Far darker deeds than any savage times 

Thy parenthood has fathered into birth. 
Thou sure wast torn from the extended girth 
Of hell to gender never-ending strife 
Throughout the world. Adultery, death and dearth 
Art thou, and master tragedies that knife 
The living souls thou mockest in thy mirth; 
Renewing curse and infinitely rife 
With multitudinous crimes against the heart of life!" 

"What sorrows, what anguish, grief and tears 
And fountains hast thou opened in the heart! 
The deadliest wounds of all the warring years 
Thy murd'rous hands unto our spirits bart. 
Thou feedest pleasures from which upstart 
The fiercest furies we supplicate as pain. 
Blinded with tears, naked unto the mart, 
Lone, shelterless, and branded worse than Cain, 
Unon the loss no symbols can impart, 
Upon the grief that raineth blood like rain, 
Thy scorning eyes us mock as down we dead are lain." 

"What struggles, most heroic, god-like, vast. 
Great tragedies high heaven might behold, 
The flesh and soul in place and passion massed 
Have fought for life entangled fold in fold. 
When heaven denied the promised aid foretold, 
When man was strained to purple agony, 
When Love and Hope a breathless breath did hold, 
Thy brutal strength heeled down that purity 
And on the sight oblivion swift was rolled; 
Such tragedies ten thousand thousand free 
All down and 'round the world the eyes of hope dcth see." 

116 



"Oh Life, Oh Life, how can man reverence thee? 
Thou parent that doth populate the earth. 
Thou seemest like a wise divinity 
With ends supreme of starry sweeping girth; 
But alas! alas! In all the thoughtless mirth 
Of man is one so insane, so prodigal 
And spendthrift as thyself? From the great birth 
Of time to the hours that on us dwell 
Unnumbered millions have no other v/orth 
But to be flung into this furnace hell; 
And still the fire and fuel grow fiercer as we tell." 

"Sex, thou art the most rebellious force in this 
Chaotic world, and shouldst be triple chained 
Beneath man's feet or hurled to the abyss. 
The conscience and the, reason are disdained, 
And Life and Love with heaven's hosts entrained 
Are trampled, trampled, trampled with a curse 
Upon all powers that ever have restrained. 
Thou defiest God and plungest into worse 
Rebellions. Thy blasphemies have profaned 
Black hell itself. Against man's universe 
Thou risest ever fresh out of thy dark immerse." 

"Sex, thou art the sovereign tyrant of the world. 
Humanity is but thy host of slaves. 
Thy passion has the highty masses hurled 
Along the course which death forever paves 
With corpses rank, too many for the graves. 
As grow the years thou feedest the desire 
So full and fierce thy offspring only craves 
The freedom, strength and actions of the sire. 
The bestial race that in the darkness raves 
And sunk with greed in time's besotting mire, 
They scarce can see the dreams the flaming heavens fire." 

"Life, love and truth, hope, thought and verse supreme, 
All ye high splendors and immortal powers 
Whose shadows are the brightness of man's dream 
And make a heaven beyond these starry bowers; 
Ye are eclipsed and from your flaming towers 
A meteor swift can scarcely clip the night 
And burst in time's profane and blinded hours. 
The soul divine that doth in dream delight, 
This srul is blind to virtue and her dowers 
Above the world, to virtue sunlike bi-iubt. 
To virtue that sustains the arch of heaven's liei::ht." 

117 



"All ether tragedies are incidents 
To this — that passion should so blind the race 
Soul cannot see the pure celestial prints 
High heaven writes upon his time and place. 
The sense of sexual virtue and her face 
Sun-glorious has never burst upon mankind 
Except to few of prophet, priestly grace. 
How blind, how blind, how stone and blinded blind 
Is this brute power man's spirit doth embrace, 
When all his life he cannot see or find 
The virtue most in need and God for him designed!" 

"Oh Virtue! Virtue! Thou foundation base 
Of human nature— the belt of strength the Sire 
Of heaven gave for man's terrestrial race. 
And crown of more than glorious, sun like fire 
Upon his head! Thou mother of the higher 
Life of being — the celestial nurse 
Of greatness — the parenthood of that inspire 
That conceives and populates the universe 
With progeny the heaven of heavens desire, 
Divinest thought, action and dream and verse 
And empires pure and free from sense and self and curse. 

"Great as thou art, thou art a stranger in the earth 
And alien as a foreigner to man. 
The very bastards of their unhallowed mirth 
Are more welcome and adopted in the clan 
Than thou, the firstborn of heaven. Since time began 
This gilded and gigantic house of lust 
And prostitution has put a ban 
Upon thy name, and with a curse have thrust 
Thee to the street. Even now does not life fan 
Man's poisoned thoughts like serpents from the dust 
And fang them eiter thee with undisguised gust?" 

"Thy noble name to earth is but a word 
The wisest few can dream or dare expound. 
And what thou art the hosts have never heard: — 
An instant and a sovereign power to hound 
The sexual spontanieties to a round 
Obedience; a sacred reverence 
That leash them down until the soul has found 
A motive pure out of the summits whence 
She came, far far from senses underground; 
These essences of thy great heart intense 
In prophet, pen or song, are they not man's offense?" 

118 



"Ts it not clear, bright as tlie effulgent hour 
Of morn and burning on the calloused sense 
That man should have an instant, sovereign power 
Upon these spontanieties intense 
And bind the flesh in chains? Without defense 
Does it not stand they should be given right 
Only v»'hen motive and reason's countenance 
Can justify their action in the sight 
Of heaven? 'Tis the first postulate of conscience 
That spirit ought to rule on manhood's height 
And flesh be servant bound to love and life and light." 

"Virtue to man is merely but a name, 
An empty sound without a soul of sense — 
A dim and hazy form without the flame 
Of even palest passion^a mere pretense 
To being and the last thing to intelligence 
That, has reality. It is his jest — 
His unexhausted laughter — his immense 
And flippant mockery — his relish best 
And rarest spice on life so dull and dense. . 
The first-born of heaven, man's divinest guest 
Scorned, mocked and driven forth from his licentious breast. 

"And virtue to the most of womankind 
Is such as to the spit upon inspires, 
And then kicked into hell far down the blind 
And bottomless abyss. It but requires 
Restraint from fleshly acts, although the fires 
Of sense may be corrupt and almost 
Heart consuming. The prophet's fierce desires 
For living thought on life, half of the host 
Have never dared to dream. Mere custom sires . 
The old, old word without the living ghost, 
Yet of such 'virtue' fine they loudly talk and boast." 

"Most men are only virtuous wheii dead. 
Or, if alive, his heart is like a hell 
As sense and soul are by each other bled. 
Great nature's flesh and sense corruptions well 
Into him and the vast impulsions impell 
Him fierce and blindly on. Within his heart 
'Tis hard to find the letters mere that spell 
Out 'virtue.' He rarely sees the lightning dart 
Forth from her flaining countenance to lell 
His fierce and blinded passions that upstart. 
The man his own ideal, worlds, worlds and worlds apart." 

119 



"Most womenkind are virtuous till Ihey wed, 
But shortly after, and they are no more 
Virtuous than their husbands. They are led 
Murmurless through the degradations yore 
Man heaps on them. Does their living protest soar 
And with righteous indignation shake the bower 
Of heaven and earth? Does their god-like lore 
Of purity stand up before the hour 
And love's celestial visions blinding pour 
Upon life's coreless coreless heart? Do they shov/er 
God's judgments on the sense that life and love devour?" 

"Virtue! Virtue! thy noble institution, 
The institution best designed for man, 
A God-conceived and heavenly execution 
Built up for thee and thy ideal clan; 
What can it be when earth's great washing-pan 
Can scarcely find a virtuous spirit bright 
And never dreams a multitude that can 
Rhyme thy nature and fellowship thy height? 
They are not found, though since the world began 
Thou standest at the door and by thy presence bright 
The entrance doth adorn and man doth strong invite." 

"But now it seems thou dost thy steps retrace. 
A judgment curse seems on the institution. 
It serves but to perpetuate the race 
And gives to both a virtuous execution 
To the flesh. It gives a dissolution 
To all restraining powers the conscience 
And th-^ God within in rich diffusion 
Can summons up against the flesh intense 
That binds the soul to its worst prostitution. 
Oh Love and Life, gone has not virtue hence 
And left the state divine to rule itself by sense?" 

"A mere marriage license — a performance 
By a priest — the sanction of ages hoar 
And unbroken centuries of silence 
Give to unbridled flesh a honey store 
Of sex satiety, till the very core 
Of life with vast revulsion cries: 'Aroint! 
Aroint! Out of my sight! The state is sore 
With dread disease. It doth disannoint 
Life's golden hopes, the hopes that ever soar 
To heaven's height to which its blessings point 
Oft to the wise it seems a mere respected joint.' ' 

120 



"l-[ow many and many a most uahallowed flame 
Of fierce and undiscoverable desire 
Finds full expression here without the blame 
Of calloused conscience. The licentious fire 
No li( ense ever satisfies but a highei- 
License breeds, here finds a virtuous vent 
And never dreams what virtue doth require. 
Within the institution are violations pent 
That more than those without draws down the ire 
Of heaven. When a lightning hand has rent 
The curtains round the bed how marriage down is bent." 

"What multitudes beneath this shelier live 
And look to heaven without a blush of shame! 
Could they their own equal indulgence give 
Though young in yearg and fiercer with the flame 
Of passion? For just one week if they would frame 
Themselves to virtue conscience would feel the wrong; 
If for a month a most unmentioned name 
Would thunder out its tones and a brothel song 
Would brand them; half a year would them proclaim 
As prisoners that unto hell belong, 
Under sr«me demon throne in chains and dungeons strong.' 

"Is sensuality with one man or 
Woman any better than sensuality 
With a score? Does this mystic marriage lore 
Sanctify the gluttony on which we 
Rain damnation if they the customs flee? 
Is not the problem this: Is the moral man 
Or woman a slave, a slave to the 
Sexual spontanieties? If so, how can 
The time and place, the who and how essential be? 
But sensual blindness never yet did scan 
The god-like, sun-like lines of life's supremest plan." 

"How few, how very few dare stand before 
Themselves — before the noblest thoughts of time — 
Before Life's ideals that with gladness soar 
To heaven's height — before the Oversoul sublime 
Who towers above this universe we climb! 
How few dare vow the Institution has cast 
A vast repression on human nature's prime — 
Est im.pulse! Stand up. Ah Soul! Answer the vast 
Interrogations the heights of heaven chime 
Upon thee! Has the marriage of the past 
Bred virtue in the race and bound the passions fast?" 

121 



"Bred virtue in the race! Behold the late 
Developments that marriage brings to birth! 
But stand in pause and silent contemplate 
The ripe perfections and full rounded girth 
Of its last evolutions. All round the earth 
The high ideal is shattered and its design 
Is finding now the fullness of its worth 
But to relieve this mutual sexual pine. 
The flesh, the flesh, and its unhallowed mirth 
Is their ambrosial fruit and nectared wine. 
And breeds the worst disease the prophet's eyes can sign." 

"The institution is sinking to the deep, 
And from the deep new degradations rise. 
Some infernal inspirations so steep 
The soul in sense, from nature it unties 
And Him behind both mad and blind defies. 
Thousands, tens of thousands, yea, multitudes 
Make the Institution the mother that supplies 
The crim.es of life. Upon the world intrudes 
A marriage state that offspring doth despise, 
And breeds instead the hell-engendered broods 
Against whom heaven wars with nature's mighty feuds." 

"Is not this suicidal clan akin 
To the branded and Cain-accursed race? 
Have they no fellowship or standing in 
The honored crimes that humanity disgrace? 
Does not this virtue meet and oft embrace 
The abortionist, and are they never found 
In company of murderers? They pace 
The v^ry gates of birth with purpose bound 
To assassinate the hopes of life that face 
The morning. Life from her deeps profound 
Shrinks, shrinks in horror back from these assassins round. 

"And more, Oh more. Oh vastly vastly more 
Of rank corruption, disease and death and shame, 
Of tragedies and anguish ever sore 
Are bred on earth out of this sexual flame! 
From top to bottom of the social frame. 
All round the world, on every distant shore, 
Back through the endless ages without name. 
It is the same old hist'ry o'er and o'er, 
Forever changing all but its sexual aim. 
Down from the rind, down to the very core, 
'Tis sexuality reigns, and reigns now more than yore." 

122 



"Oh mail, the man prophets have dreamed, the man 
The moments disentangle from the curse, 
The man revealed in that celestial plan 
That lides upon the summit of the universe! 
Oh cosmopolitan spirit! Oh purse 
In v/]jom the Infinite delights to stay 
And with his life unto the ideal nurse! 
As thou beholdest thy evolution's way 
And the multitudinous wrecks that vex and verse 
The man that wished but had not power to sway. 
Oh utter forth thy heart in some prophetic lay!" 

"'No more, no more;' a mighty spirit cries 
In noble strains of high prophetic verse. 
'No more, no more;' the mighty measures rise 
Above the earth and discords of the curse. 
'No nio]-e, no more;' most mighty passions nurse 
The. strain that climbeth up the heaven's height 
And drowns all song the starry choirs unpurse. 
'No more. No more!' the culminating might 
Seems climbing up the towering universe 
And lifts my soul with infinite delight 
Into the srng divine that circles round the night." 

" 'No more, no more the offspring round that lies! 
No more, no more the children of the curse! 
No more, no more the beings that arise 
Out of the beast and go to beasts and worse! 
No more, no more let living nature nurse 
A dragon brood at her maternal breasts 
And thus companion, and still more disburse 
The pent-up sense that every bosom nests! 
No more, no more, Oh vastest universe! 
Breed and sustain the long unwelcome guests 
That desecrate thy name and trample on thy bests!'" 

" 'No more, no more the low and bestial powers 
Of life perpetuate the generations 

And bring them up from time's dark brothel bowers 
And send them forth with such fierce dominations! 
No more, no more the world's first foul creations 
That laired and whelped as brutes in brutal state 
Bring forth the seed to mount unto the stations 
Of great man! No more, no more thus populate 
The portals of the universe with nations 
That the universe can never, never mate. 
But casts them forth as dung from her divine estate!'" 

123 



" 'No more, no more the flesh though fair to eyes 
That only live to write their condemnations 
And slay the hopes that heaven bids arise 
To man the world and guide its recreations! 
No more, no more, the dark engenderations 
So sinister sired twixt pleasure and a curse. 
Whose meat and drink are sexual satiations 
And hungry still its passions to unpurse! 
No more, no more the night-born dominations, 
Sense anarchs fierce and hist'ries that they nurse 
But always like themselves and sometimes worse and worse!'" 

" 'No more, no more the dark distempered dream 
To think we need more of this cursed kind! 
No more, no more diseaseful passion;? stream 
Into the child and thus its future bind 
And slay tvvice dead to all for which designed! 
Does this high age require the breed begot 
By brutal sense that qualifies the mind 
With most immoral bias? Does not 
The lov>r-born breed its own destruction find? 
Do not their forms high heaven's brightness blot? 
Do not their deeds like plagues the earth though salted rot? 

" 'How long, how long shall sensuality be 
The undisputed parent of the earth. 
And breathe the strength of white intensity 
Into each heart of dark delivered birth? 
How long, how long shall sense of blindest mirth 
A mid-wife be that standeth at life's gate 
To take the child, robbed of its highest worth, 
And to herself to instant dedicate? 
Sense makes for soul this lightning blasted dearth 
And on her dreams all curses imprecate, 
Her generations long, deform, disease and weight.' " 

" 'How long, how long, out of a multitude 
Shall but one child be born from heart and mind, 
Unlike the offspring that has ever been the brood 
Of pleasure, and as kind produces kind 
Come forth sensual, deaf and dumb and blind! 
How long, how long shall the great intelligence 
Of mail be bound and dream or dare to find 
The source of this infinity in sense? 
Around the globe life's source is thus entwined. 
It seems as nature's very ordinance 
And man and state and church stand up in its defence.' ** 

124 



" 'Grant, grant, ye Powers, a parentage of virtue, 
A parentage in whom predominate 
The morals and the motives that secure 
The child's divinest right, and thus create 
A nature rich, harmonious to the state 
The ancient heavens designed. Svich parents 
Would behold the ripe posterities that mate 
The glorious dreams of millenial ages hence. 
In them high heaven would build its god-like stale, 
The unembodied soul of life immense 
Forever calls to come and give her immanance.' " 

" 'Come forth, come forth, ye high supernal powers 
Designed to rule upon man's highest stations, 
Enter the night and by thy sunlike dowers 
Reveal to soul the senses' usurpations! 
Ideals divine, visions and pure creations 
That girdle, guide and crown the universe. 
Deliver man from time's long degradations 
That bles&ing seem, but swallow up in curse! 
Destroy the old, the old old circulations 

Of ancient days, and in his spirit nurse [verse! ' " 

The dreams that ye have dreamed and nourished with your 

" 'Come, thou spirit of intelligence and thought! 
Thou art the liberator of the heart. 
For thou must teach ere liberty is sought. 
Throughout the whole brute sphere thy lightnings dart 
As midnight bolts upon the guilty start. 
Think into this unthinking man and shake 
His blinded world with moral earthquakes. Impart 
The mighty energy that forever breaks 
The powers of sense. To their blind senses bart 
Life's truth divine! 'A thoughtful parent makes 
The virtuous heirs of hope the future thankful takes.'" 

" 'Oh Love, thou art the nurse of life — the crcwn 
Upon the brow of heaven's heightless height — 
The battle, conquest, victory and renown 
Are thine, and thy omnipotential might 
Shall reign supreme o'er boundless day and night! 
Oh, enter man! As white as glowing fire 
Cleanse thou the flesh, the soul purge and bediglit 
With thine own nature. Within him be the sire 
Of noble sons that bear thy image bright. 
Oh Love divine, with infinite inspire 
The generations bring that mount forever higher!' " 

125 



"'Oh Eternity! Eternity! 
There never will he men till thou dost rise 
Within man's heart and hy thy spirit he 
The nature and the consciousness that cries 
For life and love enthroned upon the skies! 
Who is so fit to usher into life 
The nurslings of immortality and supplies 
Of strength to battle with chaotic strife? 
What noble births of angel-front and eyes 
Would issue forth with god-like actions rife 
If thou didst dominate the husband and the wife?' " 

" 'Oh God, Oh God, Thou fatherhood supreme. 
The father of all vast created things, 
Father once more the man and in him stream 
The virtuous life that in thy bosom springs. 
Then shall the offspring that thy Spirit brings 
Be glorious as heaven's white celectial dove 
Has ever brooded o'er or gladly sings 
Into the world. The generations of 
Such a passion will live on lightning wings, 
Like kings and queens soaring to heaven above. 
The heaven of heavens supreme, of life in love with love,' " 

" Tome, come, Oh come ye distant generations, 
Ye generations of the golden morn, 
Ye progeny of god-like dominations 
No dream of man shall ever dare to scorn! 
Spirits of fire, immortal souls unshorn — 
Sense, passion, stature, majesty and power — 
Chosen of heaven, upon whom are ever borne 
The ideals and everlasting dower 
Of man. Oh come upon this weary, worn 
And mangled world, and let her latest hour 
Be sheltered by the peace high heavens on ye shower! " 

Thus died the song and scenes upon my eyes; 
Thus died the hour of the enfranchised man. 
The future man that struggled to arise 
Out of the flesh into his ideal plan. 
I saw the travailing spirit that would scan 
The ages, and within the memory shrined 
Were the scenes and songs. Our golden hours can 
Never live or die on earth. The revel blind 
Rolled its tide upon me. As it o'er ran 
The high inspir'^ I sunk back unto my kind. 
But the scenes and song and man my spirit more did bind. 

126 



GO, GO MY SONGS! 

Go, v,o my songs! To neglect and s(orn 
As your older kin ye were certain born. 
But we'll find ourselves! If we find the self 
We can stand up straight and forgo all pelf. 

Who findeth the self that is most himself 
Finds a world of life and the springs of health; 
He findeth the self that is not himself 
And the vast round globe and her stores of wealth. 

To ourselves alone let us faithful be! 
Let us sing our songs, wise, beautiful, free! 
They sing to the world and the forward years 
Who sing to themselves and the upper spheres. 

Let us find ourselves! Let us stand up straight. 
Front the world of strife and the strength of fate! 
In a world of wealth 'tis the crowning wealth 
But to stand up straight in the higher self. 




127 



15 1913 



'i>^^^^>^ 



018 407 126 5 t 





